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 May
24, 2000
Dear Ternani #2
"First Impressions"
I came to Terni during the summer of 1999. I had barely even heard
of the city, let alone visited it. I did not know anyone who lived
there and the only pictures I had found in Italian tourbooks were
of the Cascata delle Marmore. Several transatlantic phone calls
had secured me a room at the Brenta 2 on Via Montegrappa, and so
it was that in the late afternoon of June 15 my train from Rome
pulled into Terni. I had been travelling for 24 hours,I had not
slept, I was hot and exhausted. When I finally saw the big blue
sign with white letters that spelled TERNI, there was a little voice
in my jet-lagged brain whispering: "What in the world are you
doing here, John?"
I staggered off the train and into the station snack bar. I was
dying of thirst so, self conscious of my Italian, I asked the barista
for a "bottiglia grande d'aqua minerale frizzante." He
smiled, apologized that he only had small bottles, and quickly brought
me two. His smile and his friendly tone of voice meant so much to
me - here I was, thousands of miles from my home, in a strange city,
and the first Ternano I met had welcomed me with indness. I drank
my water and walked to the front of the station where I caught a
bus to the Brenta 2. As I rode through Terni for the first time
I recalled the descriptions that I had read: " a distinctly
unromantic city", "Soviet-style architecture", "industrial"
. . . . My first impression, however, was one of pleasant surprise:
"It's not ugly . . . it's . . . MODERN!"
The bus driver told me that we had reached my stop, and a few steps
later I was lugging my bags into the lobby of the Brenta. I announced
myself to the lady behind the counter and she asked me for my "documenti".
I broke into a sweat as I nervously struggled to unearth my passport
from where it was hidden amongst a huge backpack, a camera bag,
a fanny pack, and two under-the-pants security wallets. I was becoming
more and more flustered when the woman quietly uttered two words
that I will never forget: "Con calma." At that moment
I knew that everything was going to be OK, I knew that in coming
to Terni I had come to the right place. I did calm down, I found
my passport, got my key, climbed the stairs to room 12, opened the
door, collapsed on the bed, and quickly drifted off into my first
Terni dreams.
(Tante grazie a Luca (il barista alla stazione), e a Laura (la
signora al ricevimento). 
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