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Rome

Night Bus

brad o’brien

the Easy Internet Café in Rome’s Piazza Barberina was my office. I was working as an online writing tutor and hoping to find a job teaching English, so that I’d never have to leave the Eternal City. Every night, I would work from 9 p.m. until the café closed at 2 a.m., then walk back to my hotel. But after a few weeks, finding neither a teaching job nor a more permanent residence, I moved my bag of clothes and books into a cheap bed and breakfast about 30 minutes by train from Piazza Barberina.

Then I remembered that the commuter trains stop running at about 9 p.m. That meant I had to skip work; spend the night in Stazione Termini, the city’s main train station; or figure out the night bus routes. I liked none of these options. My online tutoring job enabled me to live as a drifter, and I didn’t want to risk losing that. I wouldn’t have minded sitting up all night reading and drinking coffee in the train station, but I didn’t want to spend the next day sleeping.

Trains gave me no trouble. Their stations are clearly labeled, so I always knew when I’d arrived at my stop. But buses confused me. I’d board knowing which street I wanted, but unless I could read the small street sign as the bus came to it, I was apt to miss it—or else I never knew where along a street to get off the bus—so I’d usually end up in places I didn’t want to go.

My aversion to buses started in Dublin. I’d spent my last night there in a pub with new friends, then caught what I thought was the last bus of the night back to my hotel. I sat next to a window watching carefully for my stop, but I missed it. I climbed off at the end of the route, in the middle of some neighborhood 45 minutes’ walk from the hotel.

I’d forgotten this experience when I stepped off the plane at Marco Polo International Airport on my first visit to Italy. I assumed I’d have no problem taking a bus to my hotel in Mestre, a small industrial town next door to Venice, and that I’d be exploring the city of canals within an hour. I boarded what I thought was the right bus, and then looked out from my window seat for the train station that was across the street from my hotel. I was still looking when my bus reached the end of its route, in a parking lot opposite the entrance to the Grand Canal. Chagrined, I rode back to the airport and boarded a different bus. A few hours later, when I finally arrived at the hotel, all I wanted to do was sleep.

In Rome a week later, awake and over my jet lag, I tried catching a bus from Piazza Venezia to an area called Trastevere. With no idea where to get off, and not wanting to annoy the bus driver or anyone else by asking questions in broken Italian, I stepped off in an area

that looked interesting. But it wasn’t Trastevere. After wandering around hoping to stumble upon a restaurant my guidebook recommended, I gave up, caught a bus back to Rome’s historic center, and resolved not to ride buses any more.

If I wanted to keep my job and still sleep at night, I realized, I had to learn to ride buses.

But if I wanted to keep my online tutoring job and still sleep at night, I realized there was no way around it: I had to learn to ride buses. So I bought the most detailed map of Rome I could find and located the night bus stops near Piazza Barberina. Matching street names on my map with the names on the signs, I traced what I thought was the route to the bed and breakfast, and identified the number of what I hoped was the right bus.

That night, I finished my tutoring session just before 2 a.m., walked down Via del Tritone and over to Via del Corso, and waited for the bus. It arrived within 10 minutes. I sat down and prepared to watch the street signs closely. Within a few minutes, the driver pulled into Piazza Venezia, parked and turned off the lights. Assuming he was simply saving energy while waiting for more passengers, I kept my seat. The buses run between two end points, making several stops along the way, and Piazza Venezia was one of these stops.

The driver told me to leave the bus. Sensing my confusion, he pointed out another bus that followed the same route. Apparently, his shift had ended, or perhaps he was simply taking a break, so I boarded the other bus and waited for its driver.

About 15 minutes later, the new driver showed up, started the engine, and pulled into the dark streets that I hoped led to my temporary home. If I hadn’t been so concerned with reading the signs blurring past my window, I would have enjoyed the ride. As the bus made its way to the outskirts of Rome, it circled ancient ruins, sped past Baroque churches, crossed the Tiber and turned down atmospheric, tree-lined streets. At the end of one of these, the driver finally had to stop for a red light, enabling me to read a sign that confirmed I was on the right bus. Now I just had to figure out where to get off.

On my map, I could trace a clear path from the street I recognized to the bed and breakfast, so I considered getting off the bus and walking the rest of the way. I reached for the red button that would signal the driver to let me off, then reconsidered. The area outside my window looked scary. It was poorly lit; the newsstands, buildings and sidewalks were covered in graffiti; and I had no idea if I’d be walking for minutes or hours.

I stayed on and continued watching for Viale Medaglie d’Oro. A few minutes later, the bus turned onto this street. I started feeling like a Roman and wondering why I had been so worried about finding my way home. But this street was long. I needed to get to Piazza Giovenale. Via Marziale and Via Galimberti connected it with Viale Medaglie d’Oro, so I watched carefully for these two streets.

Soon I was the only passenger left on the bus, and the driver and I had left Viale Medaglie d’Oro far behind. It was 3 a.m. The sun would rise in a few hours, so I figured the worst that could happen was that I would ride back and forth between the route’s two endpoints until it was light enough for me to feel comfortable stepping off on a street I recognized. Then I could walk the rest of the way to the bed and breakfast. The driver had a kind face, so I didn’t expect him to mind.

But when he parked on a side street in a residential area, turned around and noticed I was still sitting in my seat, it was obvious that he did mind. He said something in Italian that I couldn’t understand, so I made a loop with my pointer finger to indicate that I planned to ride back around. Annoyance replaced the kindness in his face. He turned to his left, looked out the open window and unleashed a mouthful of Italian—that language that sounds beautiful even when it’s about something you’d probably rather not hear.

When the driver had finished telling the night how much of a pain in the ass I was, he turned back around and asked, “Dove sta andando?”

I answered, “Viale Medaglie d’Oro,” and more poetic exasperation flowed from his tongue. Appearing to have given up on me, he turned the bus around and started his route back to Piazza Venezia. All I could do was sit back and wait for the sun to rise.

About 15 minutes later, the driver slowed down, looked back at me and indicated that he was turning onto Viale Medaglie d’Oro. He seemed to be asking where on this street I needed to go, so I moved to the seat closest to him and showed him my map. He pulled over, turned on the light, took the map in his hands and studied it closely.

With only kindness in his face, he drove slowly down the street looking for Via Galimberti. Each time he approached a side street, he stopped to read its sign, and his patience never wavered.

He finally stopped to pick up a passenger, and as the man stepped on board, the driver asked if he knew whether Via Galimberti was nearby. It was, and the passenger pointed it out to us. “Grazie” seemed such an inadequate expression for the gratitude I felt for the driver, but it was all I knew to say as I stepped off the bus.

During my short walk to the bed and breakfast, I wondered whether the driver had really been annoyed with me, or if it had simply seemed this way because his language sounds much more expressive than mine. It didn’t matter. By the time I got off the bus, he’d given me yet another example of the Italian friendliness that always amazes me.

The following night, I left the Easy Internet Café confident I would make it back to the bed and breakfast long before sunrise. This time, I knew exactly where to go.

BRAD O’BRIEN didn’t find a job in Rome, but by the time he left, he was helping other Americans figure out the bus routes. He has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from the University of South Carolina. Before deciding that the settled life wasn’t for him, he taught composition for three years at Francis Marion University. He lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, teaching English and planning his next overseas adventure.