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I had heard that Lake Como was beautiful. So after an unexpected three-week interregnum in Heidelberg so I could be the female counselor in the German incarnation of the Ross Summer Math Program, I used my Eurail Pass for an overnight train from Heidelberg to Lake Como, in September of 1979.
I arrived in Como so early that nothing would be open for several hours yet. I left my luggage in a locker at the train station and took a walk.
It's when I'm sleep-deprived that I feel especially like Alice in Wonderland.
I came across a wrought-iron gate with hours posted. Possibly a museum? Certainly a public building. I peered in through the gate and saw a beautiful garden. I resolved to come back when it opened in a couple of hours.
When I returned to the place with the beautiful garden, I opened the gate and went in. After I walked around the garden, I wondered what was in the unmarked building. I went up to a door and turned the doorknob. Since it was unlocked, I walked in.
As I walked down a long hallway, I heard someone shouting behind me. I turned to look, and saw an agitated man running towards me waving his arms and shouting in Italian. What made me stop in my tracks was his large gun.
Perhaps this wasn't a museum.
I guessed he was asking me why I was there. I opened my mouth to reply, but realized that, in addition to the small problem that I didn't know any Italian, there was the larger problem that I didn't have a good answer. Even if I could figure out how to say in Italian "I'm very sleep-deprived, and I think I'm Alice in Wonderland and can open doors, walk in, and have interesting and strange adventures," I didn't think that would be very convincing.
As in comic strips where a lightbulb goes on over someone's head, a word popped into my brain. I had no idea whether it was an actual Italian word, but it seemed worth a try. I smiled and exclaimed, in what I hoped was an Italian accent, "Toilette!"
The man's demeanor changed completely. He burst into a wide grin. The image in my head is of the two of us holding hands and dancing around merrily singing "Toilette! Toilette!" but perhaps my memory exaggerates.
He escorted me down the hallway to the women's room, and then escorted me out of the building with a smile. I felt as if we were friends.
I never did learn what was in that building, other than a toilet, but I suspect it was military-related.
I continued on to Rome, arriving in the evening. I phoned the number that an Italian friend of my brother had given me when I saw them four weeks earlier in Tübingen. I arrived in Rome three weeks later than she expected, due to my Heidelberg stay. The woman who answered the phone spoke only Italian, of which I understood not a word. My translation of our conversation is entirely a conjectured fabrication:
Me: "I'd like to speak to X."Her: "Oh, she's my daughter. Alas, she left two weeks ago. Is there anything I can do to help?"Me: An explanation of how I knew X, and how I'm sorry I missed her.Her and me: More pleasantries, ending the call on good terms, feeling as if we completely understood each other, even though the only word we both understood was her daughter's name.
Perhaps I'm completely wrong about our conversation, and I just dialed a wrong number. But it seemed to me that I had understood everything my interlocutor wanted to convey, from her tone of voice, without even the benefit of gestures or visual cues.
After staying at hostels in Rome, I moved to a hostel in Foligno, from which I took a day trip to Assisi.
My brother's battered copy of "Europe on $5 a day" from the early 1970s said that women in Italy were expected to dress modestly and not wear pants, so I spent most of my time in Italy in a light-weight full-length cotton skirt. 
In Assisi, as I approached the Basilica of Saint Francis, I felt a tickling on my upper thigh. I pressed my hand against the skirt, and was immediately stung by a wasp that had flown up my skirt.
Knowing that people can be allergic to such venom, I wandered into the basilica, looking for advice. I soon found a small group of female middle-aged American tourists. I explained about the wasp and asked whether they thought I should do something about it.
They accosted a passing priest and asked if the church has a first aid kit. Each time they tried to explain, he answered in perfect, unaccented English, "Please ladies, just tell me what it is that you want." They asked for a first aid kit, they asked for a doctor, they asked for a hospital, but always the same reply. The priest didn't understand anything they said. Perhaps the one sentence he spoke was the only one he knew.
The priest bade us follow him. We arrived at a fresco depicting Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata. He thought that's what we wanted to see.
I remembered my magic word and asked, "Toilette?" The priest's eyes lit up again. At last, he actually understood something we said. "Well, why didn't you just say that in the first place?" he asked, sounding annoyed. He gestured that I would need to leave the basilica and then go downstairs.
Figuring that would both extricate myself from the situation and give me a chance to look at my leg, I left the women and priest in the basilica as they continued to argue about stigmata and wasp stings.
I found a women's room of dubious cleanliness, went to a stall, and saw that a large part of my thigh had swelled up considerably. It did look like something to worry about.
As I left the restroom, a woman entered and then followed me out, yelling angrily at me. She ran after me, but I ran faster. My conjectural (and expurgated) translation is that she was the person who was supposed to clean the women's room, and I was supposed to have left her some coins.
She eventually gave up, and I wandered up the main street of the upper town, trying to put some distance between myself and the angry woman. Eventually I saw a sign with an "H", and I wondered if that was a symbol for hospital. (If I had known that the Italian word for hospital doesn't start with an H, I might have ignored the sign.) I continued up the block until I found a plausible building and went in.
The hospital was dark and dingy, and didn't inspire confidence. I walked up to a wall that had a small pane of glass separating me from the young men at the reception desk.
No. They asked if I speak Italian.
"No. What about German?"
No. Spanish?
"No. French?"
Yes! We all spoke French!
I opened my mouth to tell them my problem, but closed it when I realized I didn't know how to say "stung", "wasp", or "bee" in French.
Taking a cue from the American women, I mimed being stung by a bee.
Luckily, the hospital had no frescos of stigmata. They understood. Then they asked where I was stung, and I pointed to my upper thigh. They looked at me, exchanged glances and whispers with each other, and giggled.
A young doctor came over. I asked why the young men were laughing at me. She talked to them, then explained that they didn't see how I could have been stung in my upper thigh while wearing a long skirt. They thought there must be a more interesting (i.e., smutty) explanation.
The nice Italian doctor had studied in Boston. I liked her, but the hospital didn't seem much cleaner than the basilica's restroom. They reluctantly acquiesced to my adamant refusal of a tetanus shot, after I agreed to sign a form releasing them from liability. The doctor put on ointment and a dressing, and gave me an illegible prescription that I never filled. My swollen leg eventually recovered.
I learned that you should always know a few useful phrases in the language of the country you're visiting, and carry a pocket dictionary (or more modern translation apps). Failing that, equip yourself with a Magic Word.