Mamma Mia, This Trip is Finito

After quality time with some of the in-laws, Nadine and I decided to spend the remaining time in Rome. We’d explore as much as possible in five days and enjoy a Papal audience. We would meet up with Father Dan who was chaplain at the Newman Center when we attended the University of Tulsa. And finally, we’d reunite with Brother Dominic Sassi, an Irish Christian Brother whom I met in Peru as a volunteer.

An immediate Papal audience awaited our arrival from Cinque Terre. A future successor to the Pope, Monsignor Daniel H. Mueggenborg, promptly met us.

An Inside Job

The actual tickets to the Papal audience were generously arranged by another Brother, Brother Kevin. Being that we are in Italy and the inspiration for The Godfather, his explicit directions were to ask for Eugenio at the newsstand. You know, the one just outside of St. Peter’s Square located on the right. Not to be confused with the newsstand to the left. And not to be mistaken by the one inside the square. “Don’t ask for Oregano or Giovanni either. It has to be Eugenio.”

In the hustle and bustle of a spirited day in the Vatican, we strode up inconspicuously to the very friendly Eugenio. A grandstand of L’Espresso and Guerin Sportivo magazines surrounded him. Quickly glancing to his left and right, he handed over an unmarked envelope with two tickets inside. Two tickets to the Papal audience this day.

When it came to the actual Papal audience, I only understood 33% of what the German Pope Benedict XVI uttered. The parts in English, French, and Spanish, I understood pretty well. When it came time for Polish and German, you might say “Ich habe nichts verstanden.”

The Future Pope Of A Papal Audience?

While Nadine and I studied long and hard at the University of Tulsa, Father Dan served as chaplain at the Newman Center. He was directly responsible for encouraging our interest in service, education, and travel by leading student trips to Guatemala and Europe. He also served as chaplain at our wedding.

Father Dan had now become Monsignor Daniel. In his current position, he works in Rome at the Pontifical North American College with 171 seminarians. And the campus is all within a stone’s throw of St. Peter’s. Not too bad of a locale. And despite his busy schedule, he made time to meet up for lunch and show us around the school.

History Around Each Corner

Compared to any other city on this trip around the world, Rome without a doubt has the most history, intact historical sites. This combines with a rich and enticing Italian culture, that five days could be consumed exploring everything within a five block radius.

My first time to Rome was in 2000. And I visited what felt like hundreds of historical sites and collected just as many telephone numbers. On a dare. And it was so many more than Matthew Pepper. I digress. But in this frenzied state of travel in Rome, many major spots were missed. The Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, the belly of the Pantheon and Coliseum, Galleria Borghese, and the Piazza di Popolo were lonely victims. So with these five carefree days left to explore, these sites were at the top of my list. Some of the classics, like St. Peter’s and Castel Sant’Angelo (made popular in one of Dan Brown’s book), would be revisited.

During this time, the two and a half of us traversed central Roma with the nagging feeling that we were at the very end of a life changing voyage around the world that lasted nine months and five days. I think we can safely say that we saw as much as possible in this allotted time. A bit more could have been seen if not for all of her bathroom breaks. Because of the baby, we’ll let this one slide.

Where Are My Irish Brothers?

Back before marriage and subsequent children, I volunteered in Chimbote, Peru. It was there that I met the ever engaging Brother Dominic Sassi. Probably just as a polite gesture, he mentioned that if I was ever in Rome where he lives, “come by and see me!” He probably didn’t ever expect me to take him up on his offer. But we did. Not only that, we also stayed with him and all of the other Brothers.

Their house was also only blocks away from the Vatican. Brother Kevin, an Australian with an odd accent of someone from England, Ireland, and a bit of Aussie thrown in, took it upon himself to show us the ropes of the area. He pointed us in the right direction. That right direction usually tended to be towards a gelateria.

Would You Like Some Olive With That Garlic?

A high speed train to Zurich, Switzerland ended our time in Bella Roma. The final flight back to the great state of Texas signaled the book end to this adventure. But one more memorable story remained to leave one last lingering tale.

Seated next to Lake Zurich with lunch from a local supermarket on our laps, Nadine ate her nine dollar sandwich. I ate green olives. I assumed that instead of an olive pit in the middle, a small piece of mozzarella cheese had been substituted. Due to a state of revelry brought on by the Swiss sun, nine months of travel, and the baby that was soon to join our family, I hadn’t quite realized what I had indeed consumed. In the end, those seven large green olives encased an entire clove of garlic inside. Soon enough, the pungent smell of garlic began to waft from my pores. Still not as bad as four New Mexicans locked in a car in the heat of summer, but it was still poignant.

The full damage of the seven garlic cloves wasn’t truly “smelt” until the next morning. Waiting in line to check in our bags for the final flight, a strong odor of garlic overpowered the surroundings. My minty fresh toothpaste fought the garlic. But like the French fighting in any war, it was over before it started.

This required immediate attention. Over at a newsstand, sans Eugenio, I spent my last remaining euros on as much gum as I could to mask my garlic breath. In duty free, the current battle included a shower in Hugo Boss cologne. I can only imagine when people entered a five meter radius around me, they couldn’t decide if they were in an Indian locker room or a Middle Eastern fragrance shop. Hopefully the cologne diverted people’s attention from my mouth to the cologne. Fortunately in the end, my bad breath didn’t prevent us from boarding the plane and passing through immigration back in Dallas.

Now in the United States of America. We went our separate ways. Nadine to Omaha and me to Odessa.

What waits for us now? The next step in adulthood, parenthood. And like that, this storied trip has concluded.

Peace
JW

Don’t cry because it’s over, be joyful because it happened.”
– Modern Proverb