Friday, September 17, 1999

One problem with having such a small room was the smell. We just didn’t have enough separation from the bathroom. It is not that Italian bathrooms aren’t clean. We were staying in four star hotels and they were very clean. The problem is in the design of European toilets.

I could write a long essay on European toilets, but I will try to keep it short and to the point. First, let me make it clear that this is a European problem, not an Italian one. Rebecca and I have been to every country in Europe, nearly, and we have yet to see a decent toilet.

I define a decent toilet simply. It is one which, as much as possible, covers up the smell of its solid deposits. American toilets, even the worst of them, accomplish this feat with a very simple principle. They are filled with water. Solid deposits slip beneath the surface of the water. The odor of those deposits is contained thereby contained harmlessly. You would think that anyone who had seen an American toilet would be immediately impressed by the cleverness of this approach.

The Europeans were apparently not impressed. They must have seen American toilets. European toilet designers have certainly seen American toilets. Their toilets look in many respects like our toilets. They have some odd ideas about the flush handles, but still, the mechanism looks the same. However, functionally, they are NOT the same. They have some water in the bottom, but for some reason, they didn’t like the idea of actually leaving a pool of water that could actually cover up any solid deposits.

They had a narrow hole with a shallow puddle that covers nothing. It certainly does not contain any of the odor. Human waste, especially after eating large Italian meals, has a strong, almost overpowering perfume.

I can only think that Europeans like to feel close to nature. They like to feel like they are still working in the fields, tilling the earth. Using European toilets must satisfy their yearning for the fertile fields. I can think of no other reason for their toilet design. It can only be intentional. The effect is not subtle. Perhaps the design was created to discourage people from sitting too long on the porcelain throne. It makes you want to finish and flush as soon as possible.

When you are using an Italian toilet in the morning, a strong aroma surrounds you. A certain ambiance fills the whole bathroom. If you have a small bedroom, it too takes on a certain character. You light matches, but matches are a small flame versus such a mighty stench. Perhaps the more delicate Europeans carry candles with them while traveling, maybe flame throwers.

On additional downside to European toilet design is brown-streaking. Since your deposit doesn’t fall into water, it falls onto porcelain. This leaves brown streaks. No amount of flushing really removes these streaks. Fortunately, every bathroom has a convenient brush in it. This brush is present even in the highly automated public toilets, though I suspect few people actually use it. This explains most public toilets have live attendants. These attendants expect a tip when you use the facilities. This job usually employs elderly women. Their job is to remove the brown streaks in the public toilets. Perhaps this is the real reason for the European design. Unemployment is a serious problem in Europe. Streak removal is a common job. Their ranks probably make a powerful lobby to prevent changing toilet design.

Of course, fortunately, these toilets do flush. Figuring out how they flush isn’t always easy. Public toilets, of course, are usually automated for your flushing convenience. Unfortunately, the same isn’t usually true of the toilet in your room. In some cases, a knob sticks out of the top of the tank. You pull up on or you push down on it or you move it from side to side or maybe you turn it. Other toilets might have a valve on the wall somewhere. There secret is first to find it. Some of them are very high on the wall. Some I am sure are higher than my mother can reach for herself without actually standing on the toilet. I am sorry I didn’t get pictures of that.

Some of these valves work just like a regular water tap. They don’t really flush. You turn them on, let the water run. If you are trying to remove brown streaks, you let it run quite awhile. It doesn’t necessarily remove them, but at least you want to try. Later in the trip, we had one of these valve-type toilets and Michele discovered a useful secret. If you turn the water on a little bit while you are using the receptacle, it dramatically cuts down on the odor. I consider this a stoke of genius up there with inventing the electric light.

This raises the question of water conversation. Some of you may thing that European toilet design is designed to conserve water. Nothing could be further from the truth. True, there is no pool of water in the bowl of the toilet—actually, these toilets are less of a bowl and more of a funnel—but they more than make up for it in flushing. It takes gallons of water to clear these things. It takes more gallons after the first flush doesn’t clear the brown streaks. Then you have to go to the brush. After that, you have to flush again.

At breakfast, Rebecca and I discussed the person that we called the Plastic Surgery Woman. She was a lady in our tour group in her sixties somewhere. She had a very nice husband and she seemed very nice herself, but she looked strange. Her face had the taunt look of plastic surgery, but not remarkably so. She earned her name because of her bust. Of course, it could have been all-natural, but judging by the way she carried herself, she looked like was showing off a pair of new, highly-prized acquisitions. Maybe she’d gotten them for her sixtieth birthday present.

That morning, we loaded into the motor boats right after breakfast. They took us back to our parking lot. The family was getting one the first boat when Enzo said he wanted Mom to come with him. He claimed it was to help her out of the boat when we got back to the lot. Michele, Rebecca and I were worried that he was planning to kidnap her. Or maybe he was planning to romance her in hopes of getting a large inheritance. Our boat got to the lot first, but I waited for Enzo boat that was last to see if he still had Mom with him. Fortunately, she was there, no worse for wear.

We wound our way back through the souvenir stands. This time we were wary for pickpockets, but it was much to early in the morning for any self-respecting pickpocket to be up. If they were going to get up at eight in the morning, they might as well get a real job.

The redhead was back next to the driver. She was wearing even less clothing. She flirted with the driver more than ever. At one point, the driver who spoke very little English asked her is she was married. A few minutes later, he asked her again as if he hadn’t understood her answer. Perhaps only married women flirt like that in Italy. He also advised her not to get married. He was married but he didn’t seem to think marriage was a good idea. We were grateful that she still had a bra on or else we might have been in serious danger of a traffic accident

Enzo said that no one in Italy got married any more. The problem was, of course, the government. The Italian government imposed rent control to keep housing prices down. The predicatable result was the rentals disappeared. To get a place to live, you have to be able to buy your apartment. Since young people can’t afford to buy, they live with their parents forever. They have girl friends and boy friends, but they don’t get married. This explains the low birthrate in Italy. The population is actually declining because of the lack of marriage. The government is inviting American Italians back to Italy to help repopulate the country. Of course, the only problem with that plan is that they have no place to live.

Our first stop for the morning is Padua. Padua has two sights that recommend it. There is the Basilica of Saint Anthony and there are some famous frescos by Giotto. Of course, we won’t get a chance to see the frescos, but we did get a chance to see the Church of Saint Anthony. It made the stop well worthwhile.

I never did learn the difference between a Basilica and a Duomo, but the Basilica of Saint Anthony is less something completely different. It has a special purpose. It was designed as a Miracle Machine. I didn’t know anything about Saint Anthony before visiting his church, but after seeing the church, I had to find out more about him. I have never been to the real big miracle sites like Lourdes, but this one was interesting enough.

First, the bus can’t park anywhere near the Basilica. They have a special parking lot and a special tram to get you closer. You walk from the tram, across a plaza with a great statue of a man on a horse to get to the entrance of the church. When you get inside, the church is set up to take visitors through a semi-circle. Along the semi-circle, there are a number of stops for the serious miracle seeker.

The first stop is the tomb of Saint Anthony itself. Before you come to the tomb, you see pictures and letter from people who have had miracles from Saint Anthony. As you walk by tomb proper, you drag your hand along the tomb while praying for your particular miracle. After the tomb, there are more walls of testimonies about miracles. The testimonies surrounding the tomb are all recent. The photographs show horrible car accidents—no surprise, this being Italy—people in hospitals and so on. After the tomb there is a whole room devoted to the historically signifiant miracles of the past.

The next stop is the reliquary. This is a glass trophy case containing an array of holy relics. Among the relives are the tongue of Saint Anthony in one golden receptacle and his voice box in another. They are surrounded by a host of other relics, including a letter from Saint Francis to Saint Anthony. Saint Anthody was one of the early Franciscan fathers and his church is run by the Franscicans in the traditional brown-hooded habits today.

The next stop is two long rows of confessional where the miracle seeker can seek absolution form their sins. Some of thee are closed boxes like we see in American churches, but a large number of them are open confessionals where both the priest and the penitent can be seen by everyone walking by. .

After the confessionals, come a long series of chapels that fill out the top of the arch and the far side. Franscican fathers man these chapels, ready to meet with miracle seekers. We saw families leading their inflicted family members into the chapels to meet with the priests and pray.

After the chapels, there is a booth when you can sign up for masses and prayers at masses.

You then go outside the church and across an open courtyard to the gift shop. There you can buy holy medals, statues, cards and books about Saint Anthony.

I don’t mean to make this sound crass. It wasn’t the least bit crass or commercial. It struck me as solemn and hold, an impressive testimony to faith. I was so impressed that I wanted to know more about Saint Anthony and his life. I bought a book on his life and another books of his sermons. I discovered that Saint Anthony was the greatest preacher of the middle ages. He started and ended his life as a hermit, joining the Franciscan order for a life of meditation after failing in his attempt to go into the Moslem countries to die a martyr. The order drafted him into preaching and teaching theology. He became so famous as a preacher that the churches couldn’t contain the crowds that came to hear him. He drew crowds of thousands to Padua where he preached to them on the hillsides outside of town.

People wrote down many of his sermons. In reading them today, I find many more powerful and convincing than anything I head from the great television evangelists. Like these modern-day evangelists, however, he was a great student of the Bibles. In his sermons, he lays out the case that everything in the Bible, including everything in the Old Testament, referred to God’s plan for the birth and resurrection of Christ. To Saint Anthony, all of human history a great poem was a metaphor for Christ’s life or perhaps Christ’s life is a metaphor for all of human history. It is a power and convincing vision. I find it easy and pleasing to see history and the universe as a divine poem. It is much more satisfying than the current pseudo-scientific meaningless view of history so popular in the modern mind. If I was going to become a preacher myself, I think that I would probably start and end simply by repeating Saint Anthony.

When the bus dropped us off in the parking area, Enzo warned us about timing our return. Since we had to take the tram back and they only ran so often, we had to watch the time so that we all got back on time. It look like the who group was at the tram stop on time as we crammed onto the over crowded tram with the other pilgrims. When we get back on the bus, Enzo took a count of the bus. Everyone had made it on time except for one person. We were missing the young redhead. The driver and Enzo discussed what to do in Italian. Enzo announced that we were missing someone. Enzo seemed on the verge of going back to look for her when a tram arrived off schedule. The tram was completely except for Red, riding all by herself in the front passenger seat.

Enzo said something to the driver. He started the bus and started driving off. As she got off the tram, Red saw the bus pulling away and ran after it. Everyone on the bus had a good laugh.

Teasing the redhead apparently put our tour guide in a better mood. As we headed to Pisa, Enzo shared some jokes with us. His mood was more social than normal after the stay in Venice.

"There are two old men," he started.

"One asked the other, ‘Do you believe in an afterlife?’

"The other said, ‘I don’t know, do you?’

" ‘I don’t know," said the first.

" ‘If there is," asked the second. ‘Do you think that you will go to paradise or the inferno?’

"I don’t know," said the first. ‘But let’s make a deal. If I die first, and there is an afterlife, I will come and tell you. If you die first, you come and tell me.’

"The two agreed and in time, one of them died. One night the remaining old man was awakened by the voice of his dead friend."

" ‘So there IS and afterlife,’ said the remaining old man. ‘What is it like?’

" ‘I wake up and I eat," said the one who had gone onto his afterlife. "After I am through eating, I make love. When I am through making love, I take a little nap. When I wake up again, I eat again, then I make love again, all day long.’

" ‘So you are in heaven!’ his friend exclaims.

" ‘No,’ the dead one says. ‘I am a rabbit in Montana.’"

After his joke got a good laugh, he tried another. This time, he got a little more daring.

"A old man went to see a doctor.

"He asked the doctor, ‘I would like you to observe while I make love.’

The doctor assumed that he was having some type of sexual problem, and, though it was a little unusual to be asked to observe the act of love, he agreed that, because he was a doctor, he would do it. The old man brought in his girl and they used the bed in the doctor’s office to make love. The doctor observed, but he didn’t see anything wrong. He told the old man that everything looked normal to him. The man shrugged and paid his ten dollars to the doctor and went away. Nevertheless, he came back the next day with the same request. After observing them again, he said that again, he saw nothing wrong. The old man paid his ten dollars and left again. This went on for a week. At the end of the week, the doctor had had enough."

" ‘Listen,’ he told the man. ‘I’ve been watching you for a week. There is nothing wrong with you or your wife sexually. Why do you keep coming here?’

" ‘To tell you the truth,’ the man told the doctor. ‘This woman isn’t my wife. I am married, but this is my girlfriend and she is married too. I could take her to a hotel, but a hotel would cost me thirty dollars. A visit to your office only costs me ten dollars and then I get eight dollars back from Medicare.’ "

Actually, I detected another social message about government in this joke, but I don’t know if it was intentional or not.

By this time, we were approaching Pisa. Along the side of the rode, we notice a scantily clad woman beside a side road. After awhile, we passed another woman, seemingly wearing Fredrick’s-of-Hollywood lingerie out on the road in broad daylight. By the time we saw a third woman, this time discussing something with a passing car, it was clear what was going on.

"They are waiting for a bus," Enzo said to address the unspoken question in the bus.

"Must be some bus driver," I suggested.

At this point, the bus arrived at Pisa. home of the famous leaning tower. The bus dropped us in back, away from where most of the tourist buses go. The purpose was to save us some walking. They have a big wall around the tower so that you can see it from the road. If you could, you would never get out of your car. There is nothing else to see or do in Pisa. So they have the buses drop you off and you have to make a long walk by about a hundred gee-gaw stands to get closer to the tower. Since our bus dropped us by the back door, they saved us the walk, but in leaving us for an hour, it was still a huge waste of time.

After looking at the tower for ten minutes, you’ve seen it. Actually, we’ve seen pictures of it all our lives so even before you’ve been to see it, you’ve already seen it. If there is some uniqueness and charm to the architecture, it is lost to both the lean and the tower’s immense familiarity. Of course, Enzo didn’t spend the time leading us in a tour or anything. He walked us the tower and spent about five minutes talking about it. We learned that it leans seventten feet off center. Then he left us on our own with all the souvenir shops.

The only unfamiliar thing about the tower are the cables. In their attempts to keep the leaning tower from falling over, they have attached two large, metal cables to one side. The cables stretch from the far side of the tower to a concrete bunker that anchors them.

We took the required pictures of ourselves holding up the tower. This is where you put out your arms and the person with the camera positions themselves so it looks like your hands are pressing against the side of the tower. Half the tourist are taking this picture while the other half are trying to figure out what they are all doing.

We looked around the gee-gaw shops. Michele was looking for cheap Leaning Tower of Pisa snow globe for Amanda. Mom and Michele were just looking. It was hopeless. It was prize-winning. It was most junky tourist place of all. We agreed that we could have saved three hours simply by stopping at Florence on the way by instead of going on to Pisa. We got back to the bus stop early along with everyone else. We milled around impatiently waiting for the bus to get us out of this pit.

I did discover one place where you can stand where the tower doesn’t look like it is leaning. If you position yourself in the direction it leans toward, it looks like a regular tower. A tower with a lot of pillars along the side that looks like the famous leaning tower, but it doesn’t seem to lean.

I found it was moderately entertaining place to be if you want to hear people’s reactions. They are walking along looking at the trinkets for sale, then suddenly they look up and the tower doesn’t seem to be leaning. For a moment, they are confused and disoriented. As I was entertaining myself in this position, the Georgia couple from Los Angeles happened by. The sweet gray-haired lady looked up. Both her and her husband were confused.

"Why didn’t it look like it was leaning a lot more before?" she asked recognizing me. "It doesn’t lean much at all really, does it?"

"Just seventeen feet," I volunteered helpfully.

I was tempted to suggest that they were straightening the tower up by reeling in the large metal cables attached to the far side, but I decided that I’d better not. I was on a trip with these people. Instead I tried to explain the optical illusion of standing in the direction of the lean. They didn’t understand.

I led them over a few feet.

"Oh, there’s the lean," the nice lady said, apparently satisfied again. "Isn’t that interesting.

I only thought later that I should have gotten a picture from that perspective where the tower doesn’t lean. If I’d gotten a picture of the metal cables on the twoer’s side, I could have claimed that they had used those cables to straightened up the Leaning Twer while we were there. I would have had photographic proof.

When the bus loaded up again, Enzo wasn’t telling any more jokes. Instead, he started getting a little strange. He started making birdcalls under his breath. He started making announcements to the bus in Japanese.

"He’s scaring me," Michele said from the seat behind me.

I looked at him. Was he having fun or did he really have a screw loose. It was hard to tell. Maybe he spent the last hour drinking in Pisa. After visiting the town, getting drunk seemed like a crafty use of your time there.

Fortunately, the driver hadn’t been drinking with him. We got to Florence in about an hour. Silvano dropped us at our new hotel, the Londra, the Italian word for London. The Londra was located near the bus station. There were rumors that some of the guidebooks warned people about coming into this area. Good, more local color for my journal, I thought, but I didn’t share my thought with Rebecca. She just clutched her purse tighter. As we entered the lobby, Enzo gave us the instructions for the next day and passed out a map of Florence. Again, the map was from another local merchant. Obviously, the tour company had figured out a way to get maps for the tourists without having to actually buying them.

Our room was much larger than the one in Venice. It had a tub and you could actually turn around in the bathroom. We had two single bed again, and seemed normal until we sat down on them. Once we sat down, we had a new topic for conversation: the mattresses. They were less like mattresses and more like slings of material slung between the hard sides. Still, the water pressure in the bathroom was good so it was still nicer than most hotels in Europe.

Enzo recommended a restaurant around the corner for dinner. We weren’t tempted. We had had a lot of good meal by now and weren’t going to start taking his advice. Rebecca and I were looking forward to seeing Florence together, so we took the family for a walk before dinner. The neighborhood we were in did look questionable, especially in front of the nearby train station that we had to walk by to get to the old town. We had to walk down a road where the traffic zoomed by until we got more toward the old heart of the city. When we got into old Florence, the streets were alive at with tourists.

We found a nice pizza restaurant on the Plaza di Populo for dinner. We didn’t confuse the waiter with our order. He was clearly more used to tourists. We each had our first true Italian pizzas. They were wonderful, with cracker thin crust and a thin topping of cheese. While we watched, we watched the entertainers working for the tourists on the plaza. There were boys drumming on garbage cans. There was a trained ferret that was dancing to a book box. We walked home after the meal past all types of closed stores that looked enticing.