There are many perks to being a professional writer. Namely, whenever you are at a swanky cocktail party and you tell people what you do for a living, they will smile and reply by giving you their drink order.

But sometimes as a writer, you actually get to do exciting things that other citizens never get the opportunity to do. Cleaning public toilets is only one example.

Another example would be piloting a gondola down the Canale Orfanello in Venice. Which I did.

Matteo was my gondolier today. He was a youngish middle-aged guy, fit, wearing a navy-and-white striped shirt and tennis shoes. He has been operating a gondola in Venice for 22 years.

He stood at the stern of his boat, constantly pumping an oar in the blue-green water of the canal, and he asked what I did for a living.

So I told him. Then I asked how he came to his current profession.

“It was my uncle who first suggest me to try this job,” said Matteo

in broken English. “I was 17 when I first try to use the oar, and I think to myself, ‘How hard can it really be?’”

The answer was: hard. For many reasons.

First off, the Gondola is a temperamental, flat-bottomed boat whose design took 800 years to perfect. It is a giant asymmetrical banana, which makes it responsive, quick, and the boat is as sensitive as a gassy toddler.

The slightest movement aboard a gondola affects the whole ship. If you clear your throat on a gondola, everyone onboard feels it.

Secondly, the single oar that propels the boat, in a sculling manner, also serves as a rudder. Sort of like a fish flapping its tail. Learning to use the oar takes some a lifetime. Many never get it and abandon their apprenticeship.

“It take me seven years just to learn to use this oar. It never just ‘clicks’ in…

It is after dark when our train pulls into Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia. We step off the railcar in Venice, onto a platform that is empty, except for a few singing crickets and railway employees on smoke break.

We made a few friends from Nebraska on the train. They are mid-seventies. Just a few Americans, helping each other through a foreign land.

We all descend the terminal steps. Our backpacks sit heavy upon our backs, akin to carrying 3-year-olds across Europe. Our bodies are cramped and sore. We have been hopping trains all day like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dorks.

But we all soon forget our misery. Because as we exit the station, we are greeted by incredible streetlights.

“Wow,” say our friends from Nebraska.

“Wow,” say we Alabamians.

The street lights in Venice are not like American lights. In the US, outdoor public spaces largely adhere to a strict design style that could be loosely defined as Adult Correctional Facility. The buzzing fluorescent lights found in, say, a Walmart

parking lot, glow harshly white, bringing to mind your last appendectomy.

Whereas the streetlights in Venice are the color or flickering torches. Orange light is reflected in the mirrored water, Van Gogh-like, rippling beneath city sidewalks.

Then, a gondola passes beneath us. The gondolier is a young man, scrawny, working the stern of his flat-bottomed boat, singing for the tourists. The song he sings, a capella, is “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf.

Not exactly what you’d expect from your typical Venetian, but hey.

We all walk around the city. There are ornate archway bridges everywhere—435 bridges to be exact. Venice is a town made up of 118 islands, so there are lots of bridges. Each bridge has a name. And most bridges predate the Boston Tea Party.

The bridge we are standing on, for example, is Ponte de Rialto, built in 1173.

And all this history…

It was a small ristorante. About the size of a walk-in closet, only with less legroom. It was raining in small-town Italy. The slick, cobbled streets looked like a shiny lawsuit waiting to happen.

The older woman welcomed us into her place of business. She had no other customers today because of the weather.

“No tourists ever visit in the rain,” she said.

She motioned for us to come in by saying, “Prego, prego.”

They say “prego” a lot over here. They say it more than “grazie.” More than you’d expect.

Prego means “you are welcome,” technically. But it can also mean other things, such as “after you,” and “please, come in,” “how may I help you?” and “would you like mass amounts of carbohydrates?” In short, Prego sort of means “I care about you.” Even if only for right now. Prego.

The woman had a framed picture of a young woman on the counter. The image had flowers adorning the frame and glass votives flickering beside it.

The woman noticed me looking at the photo.

“She die last year,” the woman said.

“She was my—how you say in English? My daughter.”

I don’t ask how her daughter passed because (a) it’s none of my business, and (b) our communication is limited. I am a big, dumb, redhead American who only knows how to say “grazie” and “prego” and other such words from “The Godfather.”

We have a seat in the back of the restaurant.

“You want gnocchi?” the woman asks us.

“Gnocchi?”

“Si. I just a’cook the gnocchi this morning.” Then she adds, “Is a’fresh.”

We haven’t even looked at a menu but there’s no need. It’s raining. This woman has made gnocchi. If we don’t eat it, odds are nobody today will. Besides, it is a’fresh.

“Grazie,” I say.

“Prego.”

Soon, we have two ginormous bowls of hot gnocchi. The steam hits our faces, the smell of fresh…

We are waiting for a bus in Positano. We are an hour away from our hotel, with no other way of getting back.

We’ve been at this bus stop for a while. Namely, because the buses in Italy run on a very structured system known as the “We have no idea what the hell we’re doing” system.

This is a highly complex administrative system, with lots of moving parts. A system which might have originated here during Ancient Roman times. This particular bureaucratic system has influenced many classic modern managerial systems that are still in use today, such as the Customer Service System, the Commercial Airline System, and US Congress.

Allow me to explain:

Let’s say you want to take a bus somewhere in Italy. The first thing you would do under this system—and this is just common sense, really—is visit the cigarette shop.

Because that’s where you buy bus tickets in Italy. The tabaccheria. It’s not clear why you buy tickets at the local vape pen dispensary instead of, for example, the

bus station. But that is the system. If you were to visit the bus station to purchase tickets, the attendants would just laugh at you until their noses bled.

No. You must go to the tabaccheria, which also sells lottery tickets and coloring books, and is a government authorized tax warehouse legally allowed to sell tobacco.

This is not a cheerful place to visit inasmuch as strict tobacco control laws dictate that all product packaging must be covered in 65 percent pictorial warnings.

These warnings are disturbingly graphic images intended to discourage smoking. Thus, all cartons are covered with morbid photos of people coughing up blood, dying infants, blackened lungs, patients attached to respirators, toothless mouths, and actual dead persons in caskets.

These packages sit directly behind your average Italian shop clerk, who stands before a giant wall of death imagery, smiling at you, ready to help…

I am in a taxi being driven by a man with a deathwish. We are doing 75 mph on a treacherous beach cliff. The driver keeps glancing at my wife and me in the rear view mirror, smiling, speaking semi automatic-fire Italian.

We have no idea what he’s saying, but he keeps giving us the “okay” sign.

We don’t know how to respond, and we don’t want to be rude, so we flash him “okay” signs in return. Which is a mistake, we discover. Because “okay” signs only make him drive faster.

Currently, we are motoring along on the island of Capri, which is nestled in the Gulf of Napoli, about nine nautical miles from the Middle of The Entire Ocean. All four horizons are nothing but gulf. We are a long way from civilization.

Below our cab is the Tyrrhenian Sea. Above us, limestone crags called “sea stacks” which all look like mountains growing out of the water.

The streets on Capri are impossibly narrow. Barely big enough for a single

car. And yet these single-lane highways are crowded with homicidal taxi drivers and transfer trucks who refuse to share the road.

Whenever buses come barreling down the mountain at us, our driver plays a game of chicken with each oncoming vehicle while keeping one finger on the wheel and hurling insults out the window about the motorist’s mother.

Meantime, we in the backseat close our eyes, grip the overhead safety bars, and swear like commercial equipment operators.

Our car has already sideswiped two vehicles and four guardrails. We just grazed another tour bus with a loud crunch as I am writing this. My wife and I are immediately tossed around in the backseat like marbles in a Folgers can. Our backpacks go flying. Our phones are airborne.

The driver flashes us the “okay” sign.

And because we descend from polite, soft spoken American fundamentalists who do not know…

The train to Pompeii was packed tighter than bark on a tree. The doors slid open and 3,186 passengers almost fell out.

“Tutti a bordo!” shouted the attendant.

A few of us American tourists looked at each other. “What’s that mean?”

“I think it means ‘all aboard.’”

“Aboard? How are we supposed to fit aboard THAT?”

The train horn sounded.

“TUTTI A BORDO!”

So we elbowed our way onto the train car, past Italian passengers who were not thrilled to make room for us, and showed it. I sustained a blow to the upper lip from a little old woman carrying an umbrella. An elderly man in a beanie delivered a power shot to my kidneys.

We were jellybeans in a jar when the train doors shut. Standing shoulder to pelvis.

In a few hours we were in Pompeii. The world’s largest archeological site.

For those who failed fifth-grade history class (present!), Pompeii is an ancient city dating back to 8th century BC, shortly after the birth of Cher. The town is 150 acres wide, sitting

at the base of Mount Vesuvius, a large double-volcano.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, Pompeii was blanketed in 20 feet of volcanic ash, frozen in time forever, transforming the city into what archeologists refer to as, “a tourist trap.”

There are hundreds of simultaneous tours happening at any given hour in Pompeii. The tour packages are tailored to suit different cultures. You can close your eyes at any point and hear guides speaking Hindi, Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, Swahili, and whatever else.

We were with the American tour group, which means we were the only ones, in all of Pompeii, who were complaining.

Throughout our tour, I heard things like:

“Isn’t there anything to eat in this freaking place?” “Why are we moving so fast?” “My feet hurt.” “Why are there so many hills?” “It’s too hot out here.” “I can’t understand her accent.”…

Sunrise in Sorrento was nice. Although I never saw it because I was busy sleeping 14 hours to recover from jet lag.

I awake around midmorning. The inn staff snickers when I come downstairs for my complimentary coffee.

“Perhaps you are looking for a comb for your hair, signore?” says a young female staff person.

I glance in a nearby mirror. I looked like Elsa Lanchester as the bride of Frankenstein.

Big dumb American, sloppy and unkempt.

So I take a shower. There is an open porthole in my shower stall, facing the street. It’s literally a hole in the wall so I can see what’s going on below me.

I overhear children and merchants shouting and laughing down below as I scrub my armpits. People are speaking Italian loudly. It is a singsong language. The inflections of the sentences have a definite meter and melody.

When I wash my hair, I notice something is wrong with the complimentary shampoo. It smells funky. I inspect the bottle and find that it is

labeled “intimate cleanser.”

Big dumb American. Washing his hair with private-parts soap.

Soon, my wife and I are wandering the City of Gardens. The sun is painting the sides of the old stone walls, some of which date back to ancient Greek times. The stucco villas are adorned with open shutters and iron balconies. The windows are open, with people leaning outside, hanging wash. I hear an old man singing.

Meantime, tourists are meandering the narrow streets in throngs, like the Children of Israel, shoulder to shoulder.

Ever since the pandemic, Sorrento has seen an uptick in visitors. Some estimate as much as a 65 percent rise in tourism. They’ve always been a tourism mecca, with about 90 percent of the local population working in the tourism sector. The other 10 percent are in cemeteries.

This is why on the streets of Sorrento you can hear every language…

“Bienvenuto in Italia,” said the airline greeter.

Then she air-kissed both my cheeks.

We deboarded our plane in the Fiumicino Airport at 1 a.m., US Eastern Standard Time. Although it was mid-morning in Rome, so my internal clock was all screwed up. I couldn't have been more disoriented if I’d awoken with my face sewed to the carpet.

Almost everyone we met spoke English. So we were in business, language-wise. We had no problem getting around.

We traversed the massive airport, searching for anything to eat because we were starving; all we had been served on the flight were four strands of gnocchi pasta, and one unidentified brown vegetable that looked, more or less, like it had fallen out of a diaper.

We found a restaurant in the food court. And I was noticing the Fiumicino airport doesn’t feel all that different from an airport in, say, Milwaukee. All the signage was in English. All the people spoke English, most a Midwestern American dialect. Everyone was wearing Packers T-shirts and calling their spouses Harold.

“Where

are all the Europeans?” I asked the server in our authentic Italian airport restaurant.

“Beats me,” he answered. “Thank you for choosing McDonald’s, may I take your order?”

Soon, we were out of the airport, looking for the train station. And this is where True Europe began.

The adjoining airport train station is a genuinely multinational experience, about as organized as an Afghanistani war zone. There are, literally, tens of thousands of frantic people with roller suitcases circulating throughout the station, who are all—hard as this is to imagine—not American.

You hear every language. You see all kinds. Likewise, you can easily spot the random American tourist couples because these are the only couples nervously clutching phone GPSs, having elaborate arguments with each other about “DANGIT! Don’t tell me how to read a map, Ethel!”

Also, I located the bathrooms and discovered that Italian toilets…

A crowded international flight. I am flying to Italy.

I paid an arm and a kidney for these tickets. And we are going to be on this plane for 10 hours. Ten hours is a long time on a plane, but thankfully, the plane is also cramped and miserable.

There are many non-Americans in the cabin with us. In fact, there are hardly any Americans on this flight at all.

There is a passenger behind me, for instance, talking loudly in either Polish, or Russian, or some other spit intensive Slavic language. As a result, my neck, shoulders and hair are covered in a fine spray of international saliva.

At one point, I turned around and asked the man to quit spitting on me, but he just spoke something in friendly Spittish. Then he smiled.

“You’re spitting on my neck,” I politely explained.

He smiled and said something foreign.

“Spitting,” I clarified, speaking in fluent hand gestures. “On my neck. Your sputum. It is on my physical person.”

Thumbs up.

Meantime, there are announcements coming

overhead, recited by the flight attendant in rapid-fire Italian. And I’m getting a little nervous because I have been slacking off on studying my basic Italian before this trip. And now I only have 10 hours to become fluent.

So I open my little book of useful phrases and get to work.

Right away, I learn that “buona notte” means “good night.” “Bonjourno,” means “red passenger bus.” And saying “ciao bella” after kissing the tips of your fingers and gesturing happily, is the traditional way of saying, literally, “I am an American tourist.”

There are other useful phrases I learn in my book. Such as, “Non so dove mi trovo,” which means, “I don’t know where I am.”

And “Cosa vuol dire che non esiste il tè dolce?” “What do you mean there is no sweet tea?”

And of course, “Mi stai sputando addosso.” Translated:…

Dearest Becca,

I am writing this shortly before boarding an airplane and flying 40,000 feet above the earth. I am about to leave the country, and I wanted to write before I go.

It’s funny, I’ve been humming the song “You Are My Sunshine” all day, thinking about you. This is a song people in my family sing to the people they love. Actually, the song is official code for “I love you.”

I remember when my mother sang it to me. I remember when I first sang it to my wife. I remember when my wife’s dying mother sang it to us only minutes before she passed.

Speaking of death. Soon, Jamie and I will be seated in the rear of the aircraft. We will be flying Livestock Class, where passengers are forced to ride with chickens in their laps. We do this because I am a writer, and writers do not make a lot of money.

For the next several weeks I’ll be in Italy, celebrating my wife’s 50th birthday. I’ve never

left the country before, so it will be the most uniquely disorienting experience of my life except for the brief period I worked as a telemarketer. We will also be eating a lot of pasta in Italy. So when I return I will be fat.

But the reason I’m writing is because your mother said you were a little depressed because I’m leaving you.

I know you have a history of people leaving you, Becca. I can’t pretend to know what that’s like. But I know it has left a bad taste in your mouth.

You are 11 years old, and have already experienced more trauma than most humans ever will. You were born to biological parents who abused drugs. You were placed into the Great American Foster Pinball Machine before you were adopted by two loving parents.

You’ve endured heart surgeries, lymphadenectomies, ear surgeries, eye…