Febbre Torino!

by Lee Wilson | 2006

Empoli, Italy—It is 2 a.m., and I was supposed to be in Torino six hours ago. Instead I am sitting on a bench at Empoli station, roughly halfway between Siena and Florence, waiting for a connecting train that refuses to arrive.

I had decided to go see the Russian and Canadian women face off in a game of ice hockey. It was a decision that resulted in my spending nearly 20 hours on trains and buses, and seeing less than 20 minutes of the game. My Italian friends tried to warn me about the train system. "I hope you get a seat or have comfortable shoes," said Ciro Scattarella, owner of the Philadelphia Bar in Siena, "or that you don't have to go to the bathroom."

The train was not an hour outside of Siena when it suddenly came to a halt. Everyone groaned. An announcement was made in heavily accented Italian, spoken too quickly for me to understand. A group of nuns were sitting across from me in the compartment. "Ah, Dio," one muttered. It was safe to assume that we would not be moving for quite some time. After the sisters and I stared silently and politely at each other for about an hour, I decided that the copy of Corriere Della Sera on the seat next to me was sufficiently abandoned. The second page had the words "Febbre Torino!" (Torino Fever) splashed across them, and the following section was dedicated to Olympic coverage. The Olympic marketing blitz was out in full force. The Italian version of MTV's TRL did a special show from Torino; buses were plastered with the slanted diamond of stars that was the games' insignia. RAI television covered the games virtually non-stop (except for Sunday when you could not hear about anything other than football and the injury to AS Roma's captain, Francesco Totti). But in Italy, as in America, television ratings were low and public interest was cooler than a double cone of gelato. Even though the games were only a few days old, there was already news commentary asking why people were so disinterested, or if certain games should be modified or eliminated.

My answer is an emphatic, Si.

At Empoli station a fog has settled and I pass the time by alternately watching the scrolling monitors of arriving and departing trains (for one that could get me to Torino) and the television tuned to the fuzzy RAI station (there are several stations of varying picture quality).

I felt isolated in the midst of all these people. As though the language barrier transferred to our thoughts—I was somehow separate from this collective unconscious.

The one ratings bright spot for the Italians was the unexpected success of the curling team. Joel Retornaz, the spiky haired and square spectacled "skip," was becoming something of a celebrity. Reports said that up to ten percent of the country watched the events. But what strikes me now, at 3 a.m., is the utter uselessness of this skill. There is no reason for anybody to be good at curling. And what if there was no curling? What would Joel Retornaz do in that world that may be too terrifying to imagine? I like to think that he would have gone to a vocational school and become a mechanic, and I wouldn't be stranded here because the trains would have been kept in better repair.

I am cold; holding back body shaking coughs, and I have been using the same crusty tissue with Daisy Duck on it for hours. I am not sure if it has gotten warmer or if my body has gotten colder but I can no longer see my breath in the air.

I had caught Torino Fever. Just not the one they were selling.

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