Unreal City

It's probably unorthodox to refer to Rome by a T.S. Eliot description of postwar London, but the epithet is easily applicable. I remember flying in, waking up as we crossed over the coastline (?-- we came from Poland; I still can't figure out the flight plan), getting a glimpse of the city below the clouds, sprawling and low. It looked warm and peaceful, not like the bustling urban center I was expecting. I think it was the lack of skyscrapers that made it look cozy, not cold and corporate.
When I arrived at the airport, I found my luggage and also an open exchange booth, and headed for customs, where I waived through without so much as a check-your-passport. (This was opposed to Warsaw, where upon arrival I waited through a security and customs check for more than half an hour, only to get through to try to find my gate and to be told that I came through the wrong checkpoint; I would have to go back and start over at the passport verification booth, find another terminal, and go through security again.) I warily found a taxi, trying to avoid overenthusiastic and swindling drivers (Taxi, signorina?), and the driver misheard my request for "Via A. Algardi, 19."
"Egardi?" he asked me.
"Oh, is that how you pronounce it? Okay."
He looked it up on his GPS device near the meter. "Dis is on the north side of town," he warned me as if to say, "This is gonna cost you."
Luckily I had already looked up the Centro on a map and had bought a map of Rome in an Indianapolis Borders, so I was able to argue with him (while he was driving) about my destination.
"No, it's south of the Vatican!"
"No, lady."
"See, here it is."
The map, unfortunately, has an inset of none other than the Vatican one block south of the Via A. Algardi. "Oh, you want to go to the Vatican now?"
"No..."
When he got what I meant, he said, "Oh! AlGARdi," then dived into a short rant about similar-sounding Italian streetnames. (There are several named for the Algardi family, which I had already noticed from a Google Maps search. A. is for Alphonso, I think...) We found it, and I gave him a reasonably generous tip, which made him beam. (I asked today about tipping, and it seems that tipping around Rome is strictly optional, or much less than what we in the States offer. Jobs that pay poorly and depend on tips in the States are not the same way here, and a tip is more like a compliment.)
The Centro is gated, and I buzzed the intercom, greeted by enthusiastic students and Franco Sgariglia, the guy on staff here who runs everything. I got my luggage up to my room without really taking in my surroundings, started to unpack, and then met my roommate Staci, who was coming up to grab a jacket.
"A bunch of us are going out for dinner now," she said (very much like my first experience in college), so I dropped everything except the Euros in my pocket, grabbed my jacket, and blindly followed her through the streets.

Post to be continued after the Welcome Dinner.