Arrivo

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. They forgot to mention that it also exasperates the patience, as one gets one’s ducks in a row prior to the actual travel part. I had nearly a week off work before I departed, and it was almost entirely spent purchasing Euros, organising a housesitter, organising someone responsible to look after my beloved car, getting bills paid, making sure that my credit cards and email accounts would work overseas and not be cut off by overzealous security protocols...it was exhausting.

Benny just had a going away party with some old and new friends. Lucky little plastic bastard.

But eventually we were off! We broke loose of the parochial bounds of Perth, and launched ourselves into the scintillating experience of sitting in uncomfortable chairs, either in airports, or in giant aluminium and fibreglass tubes hurtling at 800kph through the planet’s upper atmosphere, for 24 hours.

The first leg was actually not too bad, especially considering that it was 12 hours long. We flew in one of the new Airbus A380-800s, with better ventilation, personal touchscreens, and at least in my case, the glorious bounty of an exit row, with so much leg room that I could have offered tango lessons in the space. Although I didn’t sleep at all – the closest I came was mentally blanking out a couple of hours – there were plenty of movies I wanted to see in the database, so after Crazy Rich Asians, Deadpool 2, Ralph Wrecks the Internet, and something else that I can’t remember for the life of me, interspersed with drinking and snacks, the hours just flew by… if you’ll excuse the pun.

However, the next plane, on the shorter leg from Qatar to Italy, was not an Airbus A380-800. It was a smaller and far older plane. The little screens in the back of each headrest were scratched and dull, making every video look like it had been filmed by candlelight and thus rendering them all unwatchable. The bathrooms were tiny and few in number. I didn’t get an exit row (although the leg room was still better than that in the majority of Australian airliners).And, worst of all, most of the plane was packed with Chinese tourists, and the only way I survived the screeching, the gross in-seat personal grooming, and the running battles with the flight attendants trying to make them turn off their phones, stow their tray tables or go back to their seats during turbulence was with steely resolve and noise-canceling headphones.

Eventually we touched down in Leonardo da Vinci Airport, and we could escape the suffocating confines of the crowded plane, trading them for the suffocating confines of an Italian passport control queue. What took a few minutes at Perth and Doha took nearly two hours in Rome – it’s comforting, in a way, to know that inefficient Italian bureaucracy is still a thing.

Once we’d provided adequate proof of our benign travel intentions to dead-eyed immigration police, it was a quick half hour train ride into central Rome, then a short walk to our Airbnb in the bohemian university neighbourhood of San Lorenzo.

Viva Italia!