Pizza and Whine

Whenever I complain to my father about how useless the Tube in London is, he always tells me – in this infuriating “you silly little girl” voice – that whenever he’s been there (the whole two times, I add silently), he’s never had a problem. “But Dad,” I always say (aloud), “You’ve never been trying to get anywhere at a particular time.”

I can only imagine what he’d say about Italy. Yes, the bus system does get you where you need to go, but about 2 hours after you really needed to be there. None of the schedules sync up, which means you spend a minimum of a half hour waiting out in the cold. The timetables appear to be a mere suggestion: Yeah, 7:50 a.m., but I think we’ll leave at 8:30, after the driver finishes his coffee and chats with a few friends – or, as happened the other night at 2 a.m., after the driver finished watching what looked like Italian soft porn on the bus’s TV. (I guess I should have been grateful that he wouldn’t let me wait on the bus.)

All of which means that getting from Sauze d’Oulx, the mountain town where I’m staying, to the women’s figure skating practice in Turin took nearly five hours, much of which was spent standing outside attempting to focus on my New Yorker instead of the cold. I don’t even want to think about how much longer the trips will get when Olympic traffic heats up, as the Olympics officially start tonight. Never have I wished so badly to be one of those people who can read or work on buses, because even though I now have a snazzy video iPod (two months of fighting with Apple -- a story for another post), I can’t actually watch any videos when the bus is moving.

I don’t think I’ll be making the trip to Turin for a while, mostly because my job is to cover the alpine events. But part of the reason for today’s schlep was to see if I’m allotted a ticket to the opening ceremonies – there is only one per media outlet, and as my colleague is covering events in Turin (and because I have the backbone of an éclair) I’m not making a fuss. I’ve heard it’s hours of waiting around in the cold, but I figure I’m probably never going to cover an Olympics again, so I might as well do it once and see for myself. Partly in preparation and partly because it was the most amusing of all the Official Olympic Souvenirs, I bought an Official Olympic Flask. One thing I will not be pouring in it: Official Olympic wine, which, at 8 euros, including the cheesy figure skating bottle, probably makes it the Italian equivalent of Schlitz.

I’m off for my fourth meal of pizza in three days…

Giggle of the day: Outside the New York Times office in the media center, where the pages of the Times' Olympic special section are posted, someone has taped up a handwritten sign on a piece of paper from a steno pad: "Do I have to pay Times select to read this?"