Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper, who did his job well."
Though it may sound corny, this is the philosophy I’ve been applying lately to tour guiding, because I’m endanger of losing my job.
Being a tour guide in Italy is actually a fairly respected profession, and being one in Rome is really good. I spend 90% of my free time studying for work, partly because I’m interested, but also because it is a lot of information and a lot of different topics I have to handle (over 3000 years of it; sometimes I have dreams about Pope Julius II or Gianlorenzo Bernini). This has always made it hard for me when speaking to Americans. Most tend to think that I ride on top of a bus or something. So when I tell people what I do, I try to not use that term for it’s kitschy connotations. Instead I say I am a "private guide" or something. I know it is a really pretentious way of saying "tour guide," but I say it because I’m embarrassed. So many people in America don’t think of it as a real profession. But calling myself a "private guide" is pretty much true. Sometimes I will have a group of about 10 people whom I guide through Rome, but mostly I pick people up from their hotels, take them where they want to go, tell them about the sites, take them out to a nice restaurant, etc. Some of these people pay me a rather grotesque sum of money, and for the first time in my life I’ve had a job that I really enjoy. I get to meet people from all over the world and get paid to do what I’d do for free anyways if I had the means, which is talk about art, philosophy, history, culture, etc. I have a nice apartment, I’m learning a new language and meeting a lot of people, I’m planning on traveling to Africa sometime in the future, and I have been able to save a little bit. And I don’t have to worry about money. Or haven’t had to worry about money. Now, as the dollar drops, my company is getting less and less tours, and since I am the last person they hired, I am at the bottom of the chain. They are giving all of the tours to the people who have been with them for several years. My two bosses called me over one day and sat me down and told me that it might be a good idea for me to start looking for another job. Though he told me to wait three weeks to see if the season picks up. And so now they are paying me the equivalent of 500 dollars a week just to go in the mornings to the Vatican and pick up headsets and give them to groups. This takes about a half hour. But they also want me on call for any last minute bookings, so I can’t go and get another job. This week so far I had one tour, which I mentioned in my last blog. I am surviving, but I don’t know if after another week they are going to tell me that they can’t keep me on this stipend anymore. I have enough now for rent for next month, and that’s it.
So yet again, I’m worried about money. A part of me feels like this is why I’m always so happy in Italy, as strange as that sounds. But it really boils down to the acquisition of necessities. In the States, I could always rely on someone’s help for just about anything. Friends, family, maybe even the government (harhar). But here I have only a limited grasp of the language, am working here *ahem* illegally, have no insurance, no parents’ or grandparents’ houses to go to to do my laundry or move into if I don’t have the money to pay rent. Etc. Here, if I make rent and have enough left over to go out on the weekends, I’m pretty damn happy. I eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I will die (First Corinthians, I believe; or that Dave Matthews song, if you’re more for the pop-cultural references).
And so back to touring my heart out. I am basically a pop-historian/performer sometimes. I am here to educate people and be thorough about it, but also keep them entertained. This means I am trying to become extremely friendly with everyone I meet, and get to know their interests as quickly as possible, and be as pliable as possible. I have to be 200 times more charismatic than I really am. And the performance element of it, well I have to tell stories that can last 15 minutes sometimes, and most of them involve a lot of people that no one has ever heard of. Telling the history of 1st century B.C. Rome can get pretty confusing for the average layman, since there are at least 5 civil wars that I reference in a matter of minutes, each one of these wars one could devote days to discussing. Or telling people about the different popes who commissioned what in the city of Rome. Most people don’t know the difference between a Borgia pope and a Della Rovere pope. So I have to sum it all up pretty succinctly, and I have to never let my enthusiasm wain. As soon as someone starts to get confused about which person fought who in which war, as soon as someone loses interest, I’m pretty much screwed (did I mention a lot of what I’m working for is tips?). I don’t even like people, and I hate public speaking, but I have become pretty damn good at it, and more often than not I have people who aren’t even taking my tour listening in on me and coming over afterwards with legitimate enthusiasm about what I’m talking about, asking me all types of questions.
Basically I’m trying to be as impressive as humanly possible, because then they will leave comments about me on the travel websites, or they will write a good review of me to my bosses, and then maybe I can keep my job. My job is simply a means of surviving here, I know, but it is also the only job I can do really well here, since I was a pretty crappy English teacher, and there aren’t a whole lot more options.
My one main other option is to start my own company, and more and more lately I’m thinking that that might be a good idea. My only problem is starting a website. I know absolutely nothing about web design, and that is the most important part. I can make business cards or fliers to put at hostels (I’m thinking of doing a 15 Euro evening tour of Rome for college students, for one. Each booking gets a free bottle of wine, minimum 2 people per booking; this is a good idea because college students are really the least concerned about money, since they're generally here to have a good time and live off of student loans or some other income), but I need a place where people can come and make their bookings. Anybody know anything about web design?
Other than that, my life is pretty awesome right now. I’m going to Florence this weekend for a friend’s birthday. I think they want to take a train there, but I’m going to persuade them to drive. Cheaper.
Ok, well I’ll see ya later.
I went to Florence for the 4th time on Sunday. This was, however, the first time I really invested any time in the museums. Of course I'd been to see the David, but during my previous visits, I wasn't as interested in paying a lot of money to go look at Renaissance art. Now, however, not only do I have the time and money, but I've also managed to cultivate an interest in the city and it's art. It is part of my job, in some ways.
Now here on the left is a picture taken from the Uffizi Gallery. I was expecting to be bored at the Uffizi, since the only paintings I knew of that were there were the Birth of Venus and... well that was all. Botticelli is an early Renaissance painter, and until recently I'd never had any interest in that. Anyways, the bridge on the bottom left is the Ponte Vecchio. I went to Florence with two girls that I know, Federica and Claudia. They are the female balances in our house, since they come over pretty regularly. Neither of them speak English, however, and so for the entire day I was forced to speak Italian and listen to them in Italian. I can speak Italian ok by now, but it is difficult for me in English to talk about art. I think, considering the circumstances, I performed admirably. But now Claudia is a really quiet girl. Most of the time I'm speaking with Federica, but at one point, while Federica waited in line, Claudia and I left to take a walk. Not knowing what to say as we walked across the Ponte Vecchio, I said in Italian, "This bridge is really old." It wasn't until I finished the sentence that I realized how stupid a statement it was, "Ponte Vecchio" means "Old Bridge."
