Killing Batteries

Using my very limited skills and resources, I have slapped together a montage of photos from my recently completed Lonely Planet Tuscany research trip. As a general nod to posterity (and those considering my internship offer), I’ve chosen to irresponsibly romanticize the trip by leaving out pictures of me limping, being lost, rained on and falling asleep at dinner between the primo and secondo. Enjoy.

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Flying from Pisa to New York was the most profound test of my Buddha-like patience for rudeness and psychoses since I tried to buy a car in Romania.

My immediate neighbor was a batshit crazy woman from the Dominican Republic, who was totally helpless, unable to even fill in her own name into the US arrivals form without help from the flight attendants. When the flight attendants stopped paying attention to her she talked me. When I stopped paying attention to her, she talked to herself. She also fidgeted for nearly the entire flight and repeatedly applied lotion to her hands and arms that had an overwhelming stench of cough syrup.

The woman across the aisle from me was an Italian of middle years, seemingly on her first flight, who fancied that the entire crew was there to serve only her. No flight attendant could pass by her without being stopped and asked to perform some kind of trivial service, like taking away a magazine that she had finished reading. The flight attendants eventually stopped using our aisle whenever possible.

The worst, though, were the two 50-something, vacuous, women from Long Island sitting behind me. They both had booming voices that, even in normal conversational tones, traveled for five rows in all directions. Even with my silicon earplugs stuffed deep enough into my ears so that they actually formed synaptic connections during the flight, I heard everything they said with perfect clarity. And they were frequently even louder, as they yelled to friends sitting three rows away.

Though they quieted down for one of the three movies shown during the flight, mostly they just talked. And talked. And talked. It was exactly as if a Bluetooth transmitter had been implanted in Paris Hilton’s brain and then paired with a Twitter account. Every move, every comment, every idle, passing, inane thought from these two ladies was broadcast to dozens of people in their immediate earshot.

The following is a sample list of verbatim comments (to the best of my memory) that transpired throughout the flight:

•    [To a flight attendant during boarding] “Do you know where the food was made for this flight? Was it Italy? I hope it was Italy, because the food on the flight from America was just awful! I mean, really, really, really awful!”
Flight attendant: “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

•    [While regarding the big screen, flight progress display] “Hey! We’re flying at 34,000 feet!” [moments later] “Look! Now we’re at 10,000 feet!” [beat] “Now we’re at 34,000 feet again! What’s going on??” [many minutes later] “Do you think the 10,000 feet was actually meters?”

•    [When the crew accidentally started to show "Quantum of Solace" a second time] “Hey, they’re showing ‘Quantum of Solace’ again! Or maybe this is part two?” [Five minutes later] “No, I’m pretty sure this is ‘Quantum of Solace’ again.”

•    “Blah, blah the beach club. Blah, blah, beach club. Beach club, blah, blah…”

•    “Our tour guide was terrible! He had an awful accent.” [Reminder: these ladies were from Long Island]

•    [Repeated every time there was a new listener] “Well, my husband is a dentist, and he thinks…”

•     [Yelling to friend three rows away during Hour 5 of flight] “Hey Joyce! Are you awake? Hey Joyce!! Joyce!!!”

•    “I haven’t turned my phone on for two weeks. Do you think the battery is still charged?”

•    [Seconds after touch down] “Quick! Quick!! Give me your phone! I have to tell Ron that we landed!” [other replies] “But isn’t he waiting for us at the airport?” [response] “Yes, but he likes to know when I land.”

I have never wanted to openly moan so much from the pain of someone’s else’s speech as much as I did during this flight. I know threatening flight staff is a federal offense, but what if I threaten a fellow passenger that really, really deserves it? That’s still legal, right? I know Obama will make it legal.

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… when everyone in town knows you’re gonna drink it alone.

By this stage, it’s no secret that I habitually enjoy a few glasses of wine (in front of me, simultaneously, as I dutifully finish the bottle) while in the privacy of my home after a long day of writing and the sadistic four foot commute from my desk to my couch. This regular wine consumption is one of those charming, some say ‘fruity’, habits that I brought home after living in Europe for almost four years, in addition to refusing to ever own a car again, coffee addiction and pronouncing words that are new to me using Latin vowel rules which is never right in English and just makes me sound pompous. I still cant seem to say ‘Conde Nast’ right.

When I buy wine at home, it is done with delightful anonymity at a wine/liquor store just a few blocks from my condo in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Though they are ever attentive and kind, even after a year of my frequent custom and well over a $1,000 in wine and Strongbow purchases, there’s nary a wee hint of familiarity when I heave my items onto the checkout counter. I love this, because that means there’s no probing chit-chat about the special occasion that calls for yet another case of Strongbow, only six days since I was last seen hauling a case out the door or how much my extended family must have loved those sale-priced Chiantis, when I return only days later to once again to buy as much as I can comfortably carry.

I’m not overly concerned with appearances, as even a quick glance into my closet will confirm, but I found myself more than a little self-conscious on the morning of my departure from Montalcino, when I resolved to buy some can’t-say-no bargain Brunello di Montalcino in the main piazza. Drawing on my years of method actor training, I have resolutely assumed the quiet, rumpled dignity and unrelenting focus required of my guidebook writer persona – a ‘get a load of Rainman’ like manner that excuses me from acknowledging any trace of social embarrassment as I walk-trot from place to place with my Palm Pilot in one hand and my GPS-ready cell phone in the other amongst relaxing locals and vacationers. But I was feeling exceedingly self-conscious on this morning, after having been introduced to the whole of Montalcino the previous evening and they were all fully aware that I was quite alone and charged with writing detailed, accurate and, ideally, sober travel information about their town.

I’d taken drinks and dinner that night with Jena, an American expat and Montalcino resident of eight years, who I made mildly famous when I featured her as a ‘Local Voice’ in the current edition of Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria. Jena is, as we like to say in travel writing, a character. Lovely, warm, loud, passionate. She has taken on (or has always had, I can’t say for sure) all the stereotypical characteristics of a strong Italian woman – with a hair-raising zap of her own already robust enthusiasm. She is without a doubt a leading Montalcino personality. In a scorching two hours of rapid-fire banter, sometimes carrying on three concurrent conversations, we encountered and mingled with virtually all of Montalcino, who, in turn, met me and learned of my noble duty to report on all that is great in Tuscany.

The next day, I felt the eyes of the town on the back of my neck as I completed my research and, not wanting to pass up the cheapest Brunello prices in the world, decided that I would take away a bottle of liquid memories on my way to the car. Strangely, the overwhelmingly wine-focus Italians view drinking alone, even in moderation, as being somewhat eccentric. Even the dedicated winos do their drinking at their local café, where despite it just being them and the barista at 9:30 in the morning, they are nevertheless drinking in a social situation, so they’re exonerated. Knowing this, I was keenly aware of the implications and interpretations of marching through town, carrying a Brunello that all in attendance knew that I would drink single-handedly in a distant hotel room in the very near future.

A collective hush descend on four busy café terraces in the square as I entered the shop. I quickly made my purchase and hustled out the door carrying my bottle in a conspicuously large, cardboard carrying case that the cashier insisted on giving me, rather than permitting my carefully laid plan to shove it up my pant leg. Eyebrows on some 87 people arched, while they tracked my retreat down Montalcino’s main street. The usual smattering of little old ladies leaning out their windows, monitoring street goings on while their laundry dries, was unusually abundant as I made for the car, their expressionless faces slowly turning, staying fixed on me as I passed, judging, tutting, condemning.

I picked up the pace once I was in the parking lot on the edge of town, leaping and sliding across the hood of my car Dukes of Hazard style (which ain’t easy on the snub-nosed Fiat Panda), clamored into the driver’s seat and roared down the hill (which also ain’t easy in a Panda), taking a 15 kilometer detour around the city, rather than driving back through the center.

Years from now, they’ll still talking about the devilishly handsome, lonely, gringo that blew through town one day in 2009. Despite being a sad, closet drinker, his guidebook jottings saved everyone from financial ruin and indentured servitude to the evil mega-ranch owner, not to mention the 20 minute running gun fight with the rancher’s henchmen, where 4,246 rounds were fired from automatic weapons and all the henchmen were disarmed and captured without a single person getting shot. And then, like a one-man A-Team, he was suddenly gone.

Despite these heroics, I’ll have to decline the LP Tuscany job in 2011, since I can never set foot in Montalcino again, what with their long memories and legendary café gossip, repeating the tales of my alcoholism like historical legend, passed down orally from generation to generation as was the custom before there was mobile phone text messaging.

And yes, I opened that Brunello the very same evening, an exquisite, palette-humping 2004 (14% alcohol volume!), that cost a mere 18 euros or about US$24. Per the careful instructions I received in the shop, I opened it and waited for two of the longest hours of my life while it ‘breathed’ or ‘wheezed’ or whatever, then, after showering and putting on my best underwear, we climbed into bed together and made the kind of sweet love that only a man and a good bottle of wine can make. Well, if you wanna split hairs, I suppose there’s a second kind…

[PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Mardis]

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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