Collegiate Times

I was recently in Italy. Rome, Italy. There it was all about the food, the sights, the culture, the people — all as rich as the tomato sauce on my pizza at dinner.

Italy was crazy; it was organized chaos. Here you can find Fiats and Vespas that run wild on the streets, Italian grandmothers yelling from restaurant kitchen windows and a bus system that makes sense to only a select few. It could easily be an engineer’s nightmare.

But at the same time, the country that gave us the Ferrari, pasta and the Sistine Chapel is one of my favorite places in the world. The people were friendly, the landscape was stunning, and the food was phenomenal.

I spent my afternoon in the Vatican. After my five-hour tour, I was a bit worn out, and like usual I was hungry.

Like I do in any city, I pulled out my List, a piece of paper where I have scribbled down the must eat restaurants.

Tonight, dinner was to be at Pizzeria da Baffetto. On the map it looked pretty close, but being exhausted from my day with The Pope, the bus seemed more appealing. My family agreed with me, and we made our way to the bus.

The bus system in Rome is impressive for many reasons. Bus numbers start at one and to go to at least 990.

 Buses come in all sizes, large, small, extra small. Some are old, some are new.

The bus system is also made to be as confusing as possible. A single bus stop can easily service 10 buses.

It is convenient as buses come all the time, but it’s nearly impossible to know where you are actually going. There is some logic, but mostly you get on a bus and hope for the best.

After finding and missing Bus 172, we waited and waited for the next one. Nothing. Soon 10 minutes passed, then 15 minutes, and by this time, there was quite a crowd at the stop. Finally, 20 minutes later, Bus 172 arrived.

Eagerly, we all got on the already crammed bus. We were only going two stops.

Just our luck, the air conditioning on the bus was broken.

At first things were fine. It was a little warm and there were lots of people on the bus, but we were getting off soon. Only two stops.

And then we hit the traffic. And in Italian traffic, the only thing that moves are the Vespas weaving in and out of densely packed, merging vehicles.

So there we stood, five Americans in a bus full of Italians, with no air conditioning, in traffic.

After 10 minutes of going nowhere, we were getting hungry and impatient. We could have been eating at this point if we had walked.

My dad leaned over and asked the bus driver to let us off. He said no.

But that didn’t sit well with the Italians. Somehow, our simple request to be let off the bus early turned into “the five Americans in the front are very sick and very hot and the door must be opened immediately to give them some air!”

You think one backseat driver is bad, this bus driver was dealing with 20.

The rumbling from the back to help the dying Americans grew louder and louder until the bus driver stood up from his seat and demanded, “Who is sick?!”

But before anyone could answer, the traffic finally cleared, and the topic changed instantaneously from our health problems to why the bus was still stationary.

With the mob demanding advancement, the bus driver threw up his hand and got the bus moving again.

We went about 100 yards to our stop, the bus pulled over and the Americans and the Italians spilled out. We could breathe again.

Lessons learned: The Blacksburg Transit could use some extra buses, even if things get more confusing, I am sure the College of Engineering can get it done.

All Tech students should be bowing to Italy for inventing pasta, the staple of almost every college students diet.

And no matter how hot it is, winter will eventually come, or in this case, fresh air.