Less is more
September 15, 2008
On Saturday we made our journey to Rome and today our task was to follow in the footsteps of Jean-Claude Colin’s first trip. The main foci of our first pilgrimage were: The Church of the Holy Apostles, the Quirinal Palace and the Church of St Andrea Al Quirinale.
In order to get there we’ve been given a weekly pass for the public transport in Rome. The pass works on light rail, the Metro and buses. It’s a great system, it costs only 16 Euro a week and you only have to validate your ticket on the first trip you take, and then you can hop on and hop off any one of the transport options at any time of the day.
The pilgrims progress aside, news today is a little slow. You get that. However there have been one or two things perhaps worth mentioning.
Firstly last evening a few of us went for a walk to familiarise ourselves a little more with the area and ended up at a nearby cafe. It was a warm evening so we sat outside. A man came hobbling down the road he was heavily reliant on crutches and could hardly put one foot in front of the other. As he got closer he started moving towards the curb, could he be…? Yes he was going to, and put his crutches over his shoulder, got on the motor scooter and took off. Got to admire his determination to be on the move.
Unrelated to the man with crutches incident, about 15 seconds later he was followed down the road by a woman on another scooter with large white fluffy a dog, feeling very much at home and in it’s rightful place being transported around. It almost seemed to share the job of driving. The things you see.
The other item that gathered general interest were three small Italian nuns. Dressed differently, we guessed they came from different congregations, none of which any of us knew. We actually met them twice, once on the light rail unit, and they appeared again, as we waited for our bus.
The stories of Italian nuns are legendary and while we’ve been warned about other features of the city, no one had yet made mention of little Italian nuns. So this advice was, as it were, given “on the run”. Simply put it was, “don’t be fooled by their size, they’re very outcome-driven”, or words to that effect.
It looked like the advice was right on the mark. It was a very busy time of the day and the bus would probably be very full. We, like others, had arrived at the bus stop some minutes before the nuns, but the way they positioned themselves showed they were experienced at this game and there was no way they were not going to get on that bus, if not be first on it.
Time was passing and to keep our interest active, a challenge was issued, any of our group getting on the bus before these nuns would win 2 Euro. The originator of the challenge was told by those more wise, that people couldn’t take his money. Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t. It was a moral decision, that is their getting on the bus first was a done deal and people of good conscience, the confreres, couldn’t accept the challenge because there wasn’t one.
Those more wise were right on the mark.
The day ended with a fairly impressive thunder storm.
Comments
Got something to say?