WWOOFing in Italy: Best Bus Ride EVER

17 February 2011

Bus from isolated village to closest “city” of 9,000: 1 1/2 h, 2 trips/day, 6 days/week

As I arrived to the bus 15 minute early, the bus driver made the only logical decision in his position: he invited me to the nearest shop for an espresso while we waited. His name was Patrizio, or “I love Patrick!” as he introduced himself to me in his proud English with a good American handshake. We were three passengers on the bus, all sitting in the very front seats. The rest were clearly all old friends at this point; Patrizio must be one of very few drivers. Luckily, after my urging, they did their best to speak in Italian rather than dialect between themselves, so I may actually understand. From the beginning, Patrizio and I were becoming close friends. He practiced his eleven words of English, and told me about his cousin who lives in Brooklyn, told me about the time that he drove Sylvester Stallone and a diplomat from the White House, and showed me pictures of his two girls. A gem of the many conversations between he and the other two women was about his family.
“I’ve never been in love,” he was saying.
“You’re not married?” I ask, to which one of them women responds,
“Of course he’s married, to a beautiful woman with two children at that. Oh, Patriz’, how do you go and say you’ve never been in love…with such a beautiful wife! You should be grateful; your daughters got their looks from her.”
“Hey! I’m beautiful, too! …on the inside” he smiled back to me.
“But short. Hopefully your girls get some of your wife’s height.”
“Hey, I make up for size in other parts,” he responds with satisfaction and smiles back to me again.
These old Italian women don’t even flinch: “well, those genes are lost on daughters; they won’t do anyone any good until you have yourself a son.”

This 1 ½ hour bus ride covers a distance, from a bird’s point of view, that is no more than eight miles. 1 ½ hours? Painfully narrow, curving mountain roads, originally created in pre-car Italy. Not that this should be considered a challenge. For half of the ride, Patrizio was looking back to speak to us, singing songs in Neapolitan to me, talking on his cell phone while smoking a cigarette, or sending texts. I finally told him that I was very impressed by Italian drivers; by necessity they have to be much better than those in America, who have wide-open roads.

“We are great,” he agreed, “all this practice with maneuvering is why Italian bus drivers are great in bed.”
“Really? Well then, do you know any young Italian bus drivers you can introduce me to? Seeing as how you’re already married.”
“Married? What does that have to do with anything?” he joked. But, after joking, he immediately took my request very seriously: he called a friend in Rofrano (where I’ve been staying) who drives buses, also, younger and single.
Into the phone, “I’ve got this beautiful American girl here who would like to get to know an Italian bus driver… Take her out for a nice pizza when she gets back to Rofrano! Here she is…” and he handed the phone to me.

Smallness breeds conviviality. Especially in Southern Italy; I can’t lie that small town or big city in Italy is definitely more convivial than its counterpart in the States. Patrizio even confided in me that, North of Rome, bus drivers don’t even speak with their passengers (gasp! I acted surprised, as if what I’d seen in his bus were the norm for me). The bus driver and passengers knew each other by name and joked around together. For every car that we passed there was a honk of greeting and a wave. Most of the street corner piazzas with congregating Italian men—quintessential, even on a cold, rainy, winter day like today—we passed were met with shouted greeting out the window, and at one point the bus driver stopped in front of a house, honked and a woman came out for a conversation. Normal state of things, here.

Two-thirds through the ride, the manual gear shift broke going uphill, so the last section of the ride, conveniently just as we reached the only highway stretch at the bottom of the mountain, was spent using the only one shift available and moving between 25 and 40 kilometers an hour. Yikes.
When we finally arrived to Vallo della Lucania (where I was to meet my old Italian host family from a year of exchange seven years ago in high school!) the bus driver promised to bring me some mozzarella from his home in Paestum tomorrow, renown to be the best mozzarella in Italy, and wouldn’t let me pay for the ride; it was his treat. We exchanged phone numbers, of course; by now we’re old friends.