The Five Of 51

I held the keys to my apartment loosely in my fingers, sitting on top of my enormous, overstuffed Jansport backpack, sweaty and defeated. On the key-ring were two keys, a small silver key that opened the front door of the building itself, and a longer key—“the dungeon-master key”, it was later dubbed—which opened the tall, wooden double-doors to the actual apartment. I had just spent ten minutes turning the key clockwise, then counter-clockwise in various combinations, convinced the university had just given me the wrong one. It was late August in Rome, unbearably hot, and I was utterly exhausted. I had spent the previous twelve days traveling Europe, moving from hotel room to train to plane to hotel room to university to shuttle to locked apartment. Everything I possessed was now serving as a stool while I waited, wondering if someone else would show up anytime soon.

In the giant backpack I had packed the following: two pairs of old jeans, one light, one dark, one pair of gray pants, ten pairs of colorful boxer shorts, three pairs of white ankle socks, one pair of dark gray dress socks, eight t-shirts—an assortment of white, gray, blue, light blue, and maroon—three golf shirts, two button-down shirts, one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of flip-flops, and a pair of Italian Adidas I bought just before I left in order to appear more European on my travels.

A mini-pack zipped onto the larger backpack. It was removable, convenient for carrying only the items need for roaming various cities during the day. In this I kept the maps of the places I had visited—London, Paris, Interlaken, Florence—as well as an assortment of ticket stubs I had collected along the way.