After a 16-day so-journ to Italy, two ultra-Americanized Americans are uncertain how to assess their first overseas foray. Let’s see, I was cleanly stripped, within seconds upon arrival in Rome, of all cash and credit cards by a gypsy woman holding a fake baby. We set out one day on what everyone told us would be an “easy” trip to the ruins of Pompeii. It seemed easy enough until we got lost on the Rome underground, took two wrong trains, and got off when the train reached the end of the line in a Naples ghetto. With the four Italian words we had at our cumulative disposal (three more than anybody at this remote station understood of English), we optimistically hopped another train, ultimately disembarking, again at the end of the line, in the lovely but unintended destination of Sorrento. Back in Rome, a promising restaurantwith a menu that included normal stuff like spaghetti and cheese pizza was crossed off our list when I unintentionally enraged an entire restaurant staff by politely (meekly!) sending back a dinner salad after discovering Italians think salads come afterthe main course.
We did have a wonderful view of an ancient church and piazza, right below the window of our $400-a-night hotel room. It was our misfortune that the entire piazza was under total brick-by-brick reconstruction. Since the air conditioning didn’t work in our $400-a-night room, the windows stayed open all the time lest we suffocate. Thus we became well acquainted with the tap-tap-tap of the workmen laying cobblestones and the continuous roar of the earth grader.
We had a fine television set and 13 encouraging channels! The three Italian stations, broadcasting Baywatch and The Nanny with Italian dubbing, were amusing at first. We had one French channel, three German (The Rugrats was interesting), one Spanish, and three in English, though none American. While all the other foreign tourists were entertained with mind-numbing but soothing American sitcoms, we English-speaking folk were apparently deemed too erudite for this sort of plebian swill. We got news. One channel showed the omnipresent CNN International, the other a 24-hour CNN-type show, Sky Watch, devoted exclusively to news of Great Britain — which is, I assure you, 23 hours too much — and a horrid 24-hour ESPN knockoff called EuroSport.
Here’s a taste of EuroSport’s “Sportscenter.” Two spiffy-looking anchors lead the evening show off with big news. American runner Mary Slaney was stripped of somemedal because a drug test showed “high testosterone levels.” That story, be certain, got my heart racing. It was quickly followed up with a piece about a jujitsu tournament somewhere in Korea. Next up, a developing controversy in something called Euro 2000, a soccer tournament, I guess; the Brits want to ban Yugoslavia. Then a nasty soccer riot in Rotterdam; the English were blamed. Another seething controversy over another riot, this time in the West Indies, involving cricket, for God’s sake! These melees — both flat-out-of-control riots — should’ve led the show. Very entertaining stuff. A cricket coach was fired in Sri Lanka. Twenty-two minutes into the show, finally some sports: 90 seconds of NBA highlights, but it didn’t last. The final two stories: soccer and more damn cricket.
The hour-by-hour programming on EuroSport was abysmal; like the worst of ESPN, on the air 24 hours… every day. Endless hours of motocross from a track where it was always raining. Trick pool-shot shows, skateboarding, drag racing, and polo. And, of course, soccer, which filled dead air all the time. The most entertaining hour we saw was a sumo wrestling bout, or match or whatever, from downtown Tokyo. These all but naked behemoths bumping and slapping each other were really cool… or maybe not. My sports standards plummeted.
I tried to be a good Coach but it wasn’t to be. I read cricket stories, but what the hell’s a fast bowler, a paceman, a netman, or a spinner?! I had not a clue. I read soccer stories from The Sunday Times, but the English writing style is so, well… English. I couldn’t get through three paragraphs.
On current events I was right there. I could tell you the precise total number of NATO sorties at any given moment of the day. I was current on the hourly details of the assassination of a pretty London news anchorperson. But the NFL draft? It was midweek before I heard about what happened to Ricky Williams.
So I gave up on being an American and we did what we were supposed to. We visited many churches and saw Jesus creatively crucified a thousand times on a thousand medieval canvasses, walls, and windows. We walked ourselves into exhaustion. We ate gelato. We saw the Coliseum, which was beyond cool, and walked on the same stones as the Big J — that being Julius Caesar, not Julius Erving. I ordered foods I thought I understood and ended up gaping at God only knew what. We became adept at navigating the alien world of the train station. We learned to survive as pedestrians on the if-you-blink-you-die-fast streets of Rome.
In 16 days — from the air, rail, or foot — I sadly never saw a single golf course. I’m glad to be home.
Write to Coach atCoach36@aol.com
This article appears in May 7 • 1999 and May 7 • 1999 (Cover).