"Can you please move over so my brother can get on the tube?" I asked the little man smashed into me and my enormous backpack. My shoulders were killing me, but I didn't have any room to take it off or shift my shoulder bag to the floor. It was hopeless. The Piccadilly line, which goes to Heathrow, was jammed and there was no way Tom could fit on the train.
A few minutes later, I looked around the tube and saw him leaning against the sliding door behind several travelers. Somehow he managed to get on, and we made our delayed flight and even enjoyed the Pink Panther cartoons on the Alitalia jet.
By the time we got to Rome, close to 1 a.m., the trains and the buses had stopped running. Some men offered us a ride after Tom bartered them down a couple Euro. We were speaking Spanish, which is close enough to Italian so they could sort of understand us.
"Senor, senor, su coche no es blanco" ("Sir, sir, your car is not white"), Tom said, a bit unnerved when one led us to an ordinary car in the dark parking lot, away from the well lit terminal. Taxis in Rome are white, much like the yellow cabs in the States and the black cabs in England. His cab was clearly unlicensed, and we were alone with him in a foreign country. Where we knew no one. And did not speak the language. Go us.
"I don't speak English!" he snapped at Tom, and stormed away, pushing Tom's bag to the ground.
We asked around and finally made it to the hostel over an hour later.
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