The Night My Fiat Wasn't Stolen

Had a little scare last night thinking my car was stolen...I even put a quick post up about it this morning. Did you see it? It was up for about a half hour, until my gut instinct told me to call again and see if it had been towed. Yep. So, false alarm. If you read my "stolen car" post, well, consider it a collector's item. I deleted it. ;-)

But, I figured, why not take this opportunity to present Lesson Number Two of Behind the Wheel in Rome: Be Careful Where You Park.

Last night I went to a friend's birthday party and drove around the block for 20 minutes looking for parking. The situation was getting desperate. I saw one car wedged in at a 45-degree angle, another bumping up the curb to park on the sidewalk. So, when I saw a spot just around a corner, I was so exausted, I took it. It was behind a row of cars, all lined up neatly.

When I got back about 3 1/2 hours later, my car was nowhere to be found. Turns out it had been towed by the city, but when we called last night, they told us it hadn't been towed, hence my stolen car scare. I found out it actually had been towed when I called again this morning, just to be sure. So, good news is the car wasn't stolen. Bad news was yet to come. How much was this little parking lesson going to cost me?

I rode public transport for an hour to get to the depot where they leave the cars whose owners made a little driving boo-boo like I had. To my relief, when I arrived I found a sprawling parking lot not unlike those huge ones at the airport, full of row upon lettered row of cars. Well, at least I'm not the only one who doesn't know how to park properly.

When I got up to the window to pay, the lady said I needed to show her my libretto. Ok. Now. I know this is a document that goes in that folder where you keep all your important car documents. The trick was going to be figuring out which one it was.

You see, "libro" in Italian means book. When they add "etto" to the word, it makes it little. So, bring me your "little book." Um, yeah. Not really helping me out here. I was trying to call back all those boring hours of driving lessons, but I was drawing a complete blank, and couldn't really remember which document it was.

I know this will sound like a very "blonde moment" (even though I cover it with a beautiful shade of henna :-), but I just brought over all the important-looking papers I could find in the car, obviously none of which really resembled anything close to a little book. In Italy, you have to display your insurance on the windshield, and it's usually a normal sheet of paper folded up like 6 times over and stuffed into a little plastic envelope. So there were like 3 of those. And some other stuff.

I start holding one up.
Me: "Is it this?"
Tow-truck lady: "No."
Me: "This?"
Tow-truck lady: "NO. And how am I supposed to know when you've got all your documents folded up into a million little pieces?"

Alrighty then! Excuuuuse me if you people can't spring to add a little perforation action around here. Luckily a tow truck driver stepped in and saved the day by finding the right paper, and the lady started processing my bill. Turns out my car was parked on a corner where a bus couldn't get by, so that's why they towed it. Oops.

This turned out to be quite an expensive lesson. 100 euros to get the car out of the land of tow-truckdom. Then, the traffic cops had left me a little greeting card on my windshield, which asks me to send them 77 euros. Man, oh, man. Not the best day. My potential Christmas gifts are starting to look kinda shabby...

So, when in Rome, if you really must drive a car, may you always be blessed with finding a valid, legal parking space. It's akin to a small miracle. Speaking of which, it did happen once, in a classic Finny video at the end of this post.

The Vespa's Nest

I graduated with a degree in advertising. Some people I've told this to have smiled politely and said they didn't even know it was possible to get a college degree in that. Well, yes, I am here to tell you, it is possible. You'll recognize us because we're the ones who watch the Super Bowl to get to the ads. I've been passionate about the ad world ever since I was a little kid decorating my room not with posters of Kirk Cameron (I'm an 80s kid), but with my favorite ads ripped from magazines. Although I decided to forgo the field for various reasons after working as a copywriter for a brief time, the passion hasn't ever left me. That's why, when I saw this campaign, I couldn't resist sharing it with you.

I fell in love with this campaign by The Ad Store in NYC, whose other headlines include "Relieve Gas Pains" and "Don't Be a Gas-Hole." The campaign came out in late 2005, and I find it interesting how Vespa (Italian for "wasp") is trying to sell to the US market. Do you think that this could be successful? Taking the tactic of pitching the Vespa as an alternative to high gas prices? I like the idea, but I am wondering if it's practical or not. Would your average American buy a Vespa, and is the average American commute suitable for a scooter?

Average, of course, is a term up for wide interpretation. The campaign is most likely targeted just at New Yorkers, and in fact, in this op-ed piece from the New York Times that I found on the Vespaway blog, it seems like New Yorkers are jumping on the wasp, but running up against some growing pains as they try to enter into the US city mainstream. And what age range is your typical Vespa buyer? An article from Business Week in October 2005 says that although Piaggio, Vespa's manufacturer, thought the Vespa would appeal mainly to a 20-something crowd, it turns out that over a quarter of the US market is made up by consumers age 50 and over.

Here in Rome, the Vespa really is an alternative to high gas prices and traffic jams, but it's a city scooter and can't go on the freeways. I read that they have come out with a large 250cc model, but at that point it's really not the traditional Vespa anymore, at least not in my mind, and is more of a motorcycle. The Wikipedia article has a long list of celebrity Vespa riders. I wonder if perhaps it isn't more of a trendy thing in the US, some kind of status symbol. Do you think the Vespa might ever really break past the barrier of a novelty item in the States, and go mainstream? Is it a solution to fighting high gas prices? If you don't live in the US or Italy, what's the Vespa situation like in your country?

Behind the Wheel in Rome

Yes, back early from the wild world of the movie set. Couldn’t take the crazy environment, and after all, there’s no place like Rome…

(sorry, sorry, sorry! I couldn’t resist).

Here’s a photo that begs a story:Yes, this was taken from behind the wheel of my Roman form of transport: a 1992 Fiat Cinquecento. It’s turquoise blue, no frills, a family hand-me-down (it was Ale’s first car) and it gets me from A to B. I usually only use it if I have to go out at night, but this particular day I decided not to use public transport to go to a friend’s house in the afternoon. Mistake. For as much as public transport is pretty horrendous here in Rome, it still isn’t quite as bad as driving in Roman traffic.

Question: can foreign driver’s licenses be automatically converted here in Italy? Well, the answer is yes. And no. Yes, if you are from places such as Bangladesh, as my Italian driving school instructor most helpfully pointed out. No, if you are from the US, unless you are a diplomat (please refer back to my suggestion about getting adopted by the US ambassador). That means yours truly, licensed driver since age 16, had to go back to driving school and not only take a driving test, but take an oral exam in front of an examiner as well.

There I was, surrounded by 18-year olds with dreams of car keys and freedom. Faithfully after work, twice a week, I would subject myself to explanations of Italian street signs and road regulations, until my instructor decided I was ready and scheduled my oral exam. In truly Italian (or perhaps just Roman) style, on the big day he actually placed himself strategically facing me, yet behind the examiner’s back, so that he could vigorously nod his head yes, no, or semi-silently send me any other helpful information for cheating purposes. Not that I looked. I didn’t need to: the examiner was practically giving me the answers anyways. This was due to the fact that it was her first day back from vacation and she herself admitted she couldn’t really remember how to administer the exam. Thank goodness for that, because one of the other examiners refused to hold the exam for his candidates. After getting a tape measure and measuring the classroom, he determined that it didn’t meet the standard testing room size. (And you think I’m joking. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.)

Hoop number one successfully jumped through. Come to driving test day. You do realize we have now spanned about 6 months of time between lessons, oral exam, etc. After waiting over 3 hours outside in the rain, with squishy socks I enter the car, only to be told after a scrupulous examination of my documents (stay permit and ID card) that I absolutely cannot be permitted on Italian roads, because:

1) The city office made a mistake in printing my ID card, so instead of USA it reads GB for Great Britain, where I later found out that apparently there are 4 towns with the same name as my US birthplace.

2) The birthplace as printed on my stay permit is missing one letter. An S. I think I even asked in desperation if we could just “pencil it in.” That S cost me my driving test.

After being told to get new copies of both documents (easily a one-year or more proposition when dealing with Roman bureaucracy), I exit the car and proceed to utilize my now extensive collection of Italian and Roman swearwords.

Let’s not go into how I managed to finally get the document situation corrected, because that would warrant a 3 or 4 page story that would take you into the bowels of the Italian public administration, a place no one should ever, ever, go, at least not voluntarily.

Said license eventually in hand, I am let loose on Italian streets, and I leave you with these 2 golden rules of Roman driving, passed down to me by Alessandro, my primary source of knowledge on all things Italian:

1) Shelley to Ale: “Why don’t they stay in their lanes? Wait, why aren’t there even lane lines? How do you know where to go?” Ale to Shelley: “Do you see that space over there?” Shelley: “Yes.” Ale: “Go there.” (And that, my friends, is truly how it works.)

2) Use mirrors and blinkers at all times, even when moving 1 cm to either side. You’d be surprised how a Vespa can sandwich itself like a thin slice of prosciutto between two cars.

And really, let’s not even begin to talk about scooters…that can be for another day.

Happy driving!