Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Even 40 km and more to the north, we are in the sub­urbs of Milan now, which is the biggest and most impor­tant city (indus­tri­ally and eco­nom­i­cally speak­ing) in Italy, far more so than Rome. Our dis­tinct impres­sion so far is that side­walks are optional. As we worked our way out of Como south, we found our­selves cross­ing the street back and forth con­stantly to find a rea­son­ably safe place to walk, some­times just one side of a white line painted on the road that seems to demar­cate a vir­tual side­walk. I was deter­mined today not to do any death-defying feats along high­ways today, and we did man­age rea­son­ably well to take sec­ondary and neigh­bor­hood roads most of the way, once even through a small for­est. But we do at least know now the cor­rect answer to the old ques­tion in this post’s title: To get to the other sidewalk.

About 14 km of our day’s trip was along a so-called pil­grim­age route, the Cam­mino San Pietro, named for a 13th cen­tury mar­tyr of this region. It was not well marked (we found approx­i­mately 3 stick­ers not­ing the cor­rect direc­tion, and two signs, one of which had fallen off its wooden posts) and alto­gether the least inspir­ing walk­ing trail I’ve ever been on. The rule seemed to be that when­ever we saw an inter­est­ing look­ing road or path head­ing off in one direc­tion, the pil­grim­age trail went in the other. There were major road cross­ings with no cross­walk, the edges of indus­try, drab com­mer­cial spaces… def­i­nitely no aes­thetic crutch to lift you up to the higher realms. Maybe it was try­ing to drive home the mes­sage that our Chris­t­ian lives are to be lived out in the world as we find it, not the world as we wish it was. That’s the best I can make of it. The truth is that walk­ing in cities, on roads, and among cars is just about the most anxiety-inducing activ­ity I can think of. We both are way more tired at the end of a shorter and alti­tu­di­nally flat­ter day through a city than a longer and more dif­fi­cult one in the coun­try (not the men­tion crabbier).

We were par­tic­u­larly eager for the day to end because of the gold at the end of the rainbow—Zeke, Ginny, and Roger in the camper van. We found a good place to meet them, sent a text mes­sage with our coor­di­nates, and waited for them to arrive—and waited and waited. Sent another mes­sage, waited, no response. Finally resorted to call­ing their French cell num­ber from our Ital­ian cell num­ber despite the undoubted astro­nom­i­cal expense: we got about 4 sec­onds of con­ver­sa­tion before we were cut off. Sup­pos­edly we had 20 euros of credit on our Ital­ian phone, but it had appar­ently run out, and we had no other way to get in touch with each other. Not exactly the ideal sit­u­a­tion for two tired walk­ers already frayed by car dodg­ing all day.

At last when we were con­tem­plat­ing split­ting up to go to the gro­cery park­ing lot 2 km away where we knew them to be, another angelic inter­ven­tion pre­sented itself. Two old ladies appeared in the door of the stoop where we were sit­ting. I said, “Scusi, no parlo ital­iano, tele­fono no func­tiona…” Pause, tele­phone ges­ture, “tele­phone? Due minuti?” (I have no idea if any of this is Ital­ian; it was a guess with some ideas from Span­ish thrown in.) The old ladies directed us to an office just next door still open. I went in and repeated my rou­tine, and smil­ingly one clerk led me to the phone. Then I said, “Fran­cia… solo due minuti!” and rat­tled some change to show my will­ing­ness to pay. I must have really had that look on my face because she smiled again and said, “OK, calma, calma!” I got Roger on the phone, shouted for Andrew to come and give him the coor­di­nates while I dashed back to watch our stuff. They wouldn’t accept any money, and our loved ones were there ten min­utes later. It was a joy­ous reunion in many dif­fer­ent ways.

It was also the first night of camper van camp­ing in Italy. We dis­cov­ered that you can offi­cially park and do the water dumps at the so-called “Area di Sosta” spots, of which there are many. We found one not far from our stop­ping point and pulled in for the night. Over din­ner we couldn’t help but notice that the other camper res­i­dents were, well, noisy. As we were get­ting Zeke ready for bed, they were joined by a stunt dri­ver screech­ing his way around the park­ing lot. We were hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about our overnight loca­tion. Then the whole car­a­van drove off, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Until they came back. This time it seemed like the peo­ple in the camper van were try­ing to get away from the speed racer… and he didn’t like it, because as soon as he got out of the car he ran over to one of the campers and smashed two of the win­dows in. At this point were def­i­nitely decided to move on and hoped not to see how the saga ended.

Hans Wiersma says:
September 29, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Quite the trial. Hope Sep­tem­ber 30 turns out to be filled with a lit­tle more grace and peace and a lit­tle less win­dow smashing.
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Jed Wilson says:
September 29, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I think when they built much of Fort Wayne, side­walks were also optional. Many neigh­bor­hoods have them “inter­nally”, but many major routes are lack­ing… even walk­ing the 3 miles to my chi­ro­prac­tor last month was a trial.
Grace to you today, and peace.
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emily paluch says:
September 29, 2010 at 9:54 pm
this sounds like some­thing i would have liked to do in my younger years. remem­ber that this expe­ri­ence will last a life­time and many times you will start a con­ver­sa­tion with the phrase, ’ do you remem­ber when.….’ when­ever i visit any­place out of the coun­try, i return with a renewed appre­ci­a­tion of our coun­try, espe­cially my lit­tle town. God keep you safe and sane.
emily
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