Dining at Termini
It’s Monday morning in central Rome and I have a mission. We are here for a little more than a week with our friends Gary and Oswaldo. We have stayed the last two nights at a nice boutique hotel called Capo d’Africa, which is in between the Coliseum and St. John Lateran. So far we have spent a day walking five+ miles around town to go see some sights like the Boca Della Verita and Fontana de Trevi, both tourist mainstays, but we needed a transition day until I could come and rent a rental car to drive us down to Amalfi for a few days. We will return for three days in central Rome at an AirBn’B near Piazza de Spagna. It’s amazing how little central Rome has changed since 1968 when I first moved here with my family. Sure, there are different stores and restaurants, but it is otherwise largely unchanged except for the ubiquitous, but ever-changing Senso Unico one-way street signs. Even traffic patterns don’t seem to have changed much from what I can tell, but I will understand that better within the hour once I get my rental car.
I woke up early this morning in anticipation of the logistical things I needed to do to get this car and get back to the hotel to pick everyone up. While Oswaldo speaks Spanish and is thus quite facile in Italian, Kim and Gary haven’t got two words in Italian to rub together. It always makes me feel good to be the go-to guy on trips like these. There is a certain satisfaction in being able to manage through the local issues with enough Italian language to get by and get things done. I was hoping to leave my luggage at the front desk and catch an early breakfast on the hotel terrace. I got the first part of that done, but breakfast didn’t start for a while so I opted to catch a cab to Stazione Termini, where I figured a train station functions at all hours and would have a nice breakfast spot.
It is a crisp and fresh Roman morning since the rain last night cleared out any weather, but it also left a chill in the air that makes me happy to have my polar tech vest. Getting to Termini at this early hour was no problem and between me and the driver, we managed to figure out where the likely spot for the car rental counters might be. But a train station is a train station all around the world (except maybe in China, where the train stations are like starship terminals, big enough to park the U.S.S. Enterprise several times over). The first obstacles are the combination of homeless people who are just rousing and the long lines of people waiting for some unknown and less well understood bus, perhaps to the airport or some such place. Once past that and inside the terminal, it is also a train station. I’m not sure where the surprise is in that, but there was literally nothing going on and it was almost seven am. I found the car rental counters in vast quantity, but not one was open yet. So, after making a fool of myself asking a guard where there was an ATM, only to have him move aside and show me with a great flourish that I was standing right in front of one, I settled in on the task of finding breakfast.
Just to prove that I could speak a little Italian and that I was not a complete idiot, I asked the guard where there was a place for breakfast. He looked at his watch and then looked at me like I was completely crazy and shrugged his shoulders in that typical Italian expression of “Buh?” That I distinctly remember as the Italian version of “Why the fuck would you ask me a question like that?” So much for impressing the local constabulary. After having just finished watching and writing about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I am considering writing a story called LaGuardia Shrugged. So, I set out to do the obvious of finding a breakfast place at a train station.
I don’t know if the south side of Termini is any worse than the other two sides of Termini, but this side is decidedly not upscale. I stood at the corner and saw that half a block one way was a Tavola Calda where a half block in the other direction had the familiar Golden Arches of McDonalds. I imagined how good a Sausage McMuffin might taste, but checked myself and said to my inner-Roman that I was in Italy and I should opt for the Tavola Calda. My memories of them was a nice warm Arancini rice ball or a piece of Sicilian Pizza. But the Tavola Calda south of Termini at 7am had only pre-wrapped pastries and a coffee bar. One look in sent me scurrying back towards McDonalds. When I got there i ws greeted by a tall Nubian, which is to say some sort of recent North African immigrant who was being employed to check vaccination status. We are trying to get through this trip on California-issued digital vaccination certificates, but so far none of these scanners over here can recognize them and after a few attempts they give up and trust the global vax wisdom (a bad assumption for a big part of the American population), and I get into McDonalds.
My next bit of confusion is that there are two separate counters. One looks like a typical American McDonalds service counter. The other, where most of the people are lined up, looks like atypical Italian Bar with the glass case with fresh pastries and three espresso/cappuccino machines. I opt for the regular counter and ask if they have breakfast sandwiches. Rather than answer my question, the service person directs me to a machine across the lobby which is an electronic display screen cum ordering system. I stand in front of the eight-foot high contraption and finally touch the screen to wake it up. I am then inundated with a full array of local Italian variations on the McDonalds menu. This is not Pulp Fiction with the Hamburger Royale as an alternate name for the Quarter Pounder, this is an entirely different menu with items grouped into meals that I cannot completely reconcile with my American palate, or even with my 50-year-old pseudo-Italian palate. After a few minutes of not being able to make headway and a few people waiting to use the machine, I gave up and walked out past the Nubian at the door. I thought, what the heck, so I gave him a shrug and a “Buh?” just for good measure.
By that time the 7am openings were underway and I found a bar that looked more amenable with a seating area inside. I took a Fanta orange out of the case and ordered a Panini con Formaggio e’ Jamon plus a Cornetti con Crema. No problem, I got exactly what I asked for. When I sat down I realized my breakfast was almost a complete replica of my dinner last night where I had a calzone with mozzarella and ham and some sort of creamy desert. It tasted way too familiar to get much of it down, but I had lost most of my appetite by that time anyway. I am now ready to attack the rental car counter, which should open soon. So much for dining at Termini.