ROME - Final installment - The left-behinds

I promised much more of the wonderful Swoboda to come, and here she will be.

We walked the rest of Rome in a bit of a daze, actually being there was unbelievable. In Rome, I ate the best carbonara pasta of my life, I believe I will be looking for another like that one until the day, when I am very old, have lost my wits and gone grey at the seams, I die. It was literally the best food I have tasted. And at a very good price too. Nobody cook me cabonara again, as I now have very high standards of what it should really taste like. Pizzas another story, I have tasted the wonders of a Roman pizza, never really want to go back, but will have to just lower my expectations for that one . How sad.

I walked inside the Colloseum, and as everybody has said before, IT IS HUGE. The thousands of tourists that had flocked there to see the great building were overshadowed by the mightiness of the construction. The sheer size of it almost put me off, of course it didnt though, it is one of the greatest monuments of all time.

We also went to the Vatican, the first place that Sharnee got left behind. After lining up for hours to take the most boring tour on record, we decided to go and visit Saint Peters Dome. Once again we lined up for over an hour, and met some of the most extraordinary people in the line. One such person was a texan cattle rancher with cousins living in both Brisbane and Sydney. He had a lot to tell us about our fine country. Another was an English lady with a young child, who seemed very interesting in listening to our accents. She knew where Sharnee was from immedietly, but couldnt work out whether I was from a part of England or not. The only reason she would believe I was Australian was because I knew all the slang in the book, and told her I was from Adelaide, a city not usually chosen by fake Aussies. It turned out to be a very enjoyable line up.

Saint Peters Dome is beautiful. Even with so many people there it felt nearly empty. I found the decorations covering the sheer size of it all captivating, and got a cramp in my neck from constantly looking around so as not to miss anything. We were told to walk around by ourselves, (in groups of three of course) so that the more religious of us could pay their respects. We were to meet at four out the front, so that the group would be able to walk to the top, together. At ten to four all but three of us had gathered, and Swoboda said that it was time for us to leave. I mentioned to her that Sharnee, Caeser (an exchange from Ecuador) and Pixie were not there, and she mumbled something under her breath in German. Then she began to walk off.
I thought that maybe she hadnt understood me, as she was walking the group towards the line up to walk to the top, and so I said it again, this time in both German and English. Then, just to make sure she had the idea, a boy repeated it to her. She shrugged it off and kept walking. Once we made it up the total of 320 steps to the top of the dome, Swoboda said 'oh, where are three of my students?' It had finally dawned on her that we had left them behind. Her next reaction was 'maybe we should go and get them. But dont rush, it doesnt really matter'. It had already taken us 40 minutes to walk to the top, and would take us that amount of time to get back down to the bottom. In total, the three kids spent two and a half hours waiting for us, but Mrs Swoboda didnt care. When we got to the bottom after seeing the most amazing view of rome possible, we could not find them anywhere.
Her reaction to this was 'Lets wait another twenty minutes, and then we should just go back to the hotel. They will find their own way there': We searched for them for that twenty minutes, and just as we were getting ready to leave, one of the group members spotted them sitting on a stone, hiding in the shade from the sun, looking very frightened. Sharnee was ready to murder Swoboda.
They spent three hours lost in the Vatican, without phone contact with anyone within Rome.

The next time Sharnee was left behind was at the train station that evening. The trains were crowded, as they always were in Rome, and so getting yourself on was a skill in itself. The boys were teasing Sharnee and another boy, and not letting them on the train, saying 'haha, dont get left behind'. Well, the doors closed, and Sharnee and the boy werent on the train. What a surprise.
When we told Swoboda this, she said 'Oh. Well, that doesnt matter, they will find their own way back to the hotel.' She expected us to be ok with leaving them at a random train station in the middle of a foreign city. Mr Dunser, the other teacher stepped off the train looking exasperated and went to find the two. Swoboda didnt care.

That night the class decided to play a prank on her, testing whether she really deserved to be leading us through Rome. We knew the way from the train station back to the hotel, and so walked as slowly as possible, and let Swoboda walk ahead. She crossed roads without us. She walked down alleyways without us. She got around a kilometre away from us without even noticing that we were missing. Finally she did, and we joined her again. Then we repeated the exercise. This time, when she looked around, we each hid behind a tree, bin or other object, so she didnt know where we were. Her reaction? To walk back to the hotel without us. She had no care in the world for her 18 students.

Rome wasnt all fun and games though, we saw two dead bodies while on that trip. One man was fatally stabbed on the street outside of the train station, and we walked past the body as it was being attended to by police, and the other was within the train station, also stabbed. We saw him while he was still alive, but he died as he was being attended to by ambulance officers. Rome is full of wonders, but is also full of dangers. None of us were robbed, luckily, but we did see some people being robbed. Sadly, there was nothing we could do. We informed the victims, but by that stage, it was much too late to save their goods.

Even though there was that downside to the magestic city, Rome was still the best experience of my life, to date.