Segni e Sogni in Italia - Or, Girl, You Must Be Trippin'

I know where to shop for REAL men.

It's good to know I can buy myself a solid 30-year contract, with an option to leave after the first 15 if he gets grumpy.

FYI: Male-dominated power systems offered with un cappucino americano and cornetto con crema.

Darn it. I really wanted to meet Pete.
It's good to know to whom that phantom hand belonged - a phantom construction worker.

Nothing a Hot Bath @ Caracalla Can't Cure

Le Terme di Caracalla were my first sight of Rome's Centro Storico. Driving into the city after 30 hours of travel and then BOOM, enormous terracotta structures that set my heart a-flutter. We made it to the largest bath structure in Rome last week.

As you can tell, we felt quite comfortable at Caracalla. I include this picture also to show some sense of scale -- I hover between 5'4 and 5'8, depending on my mood. These baths could blow bubbles to the sun.

One thing I am learning on this trip is the failure of cameras. A camera is a desperate attempt to catch a whiff of an image, that only the human eye can appreciate. Walking through the baths quiets the soul. Texting shouldn't work here. Laptops must be banned. No connectivity is allowed except for one's connection to the 6000 Romans who would bathe here at a time.

While most decorations have been removed to museums, about two dozen remnants of mosaics remain. The mosaics depicts mermen, tridents, Cupid shooting arrows, animals, snakes, fish. The level of detail created with white and black pebbles startled me - the intricate movement of the fishtails alone move one to wonder.

Seeing the Roman ruins has made me think about materialism. We often say, in a general manner, that modern Western civilization is too materialistic. We like things too much. Rome is changing my mind. We are not too materialistic, we simply don't respect things enough. We have so much stuff that we pay little effort into artistry. Stain your favorite shirt? Buy another one. Apartment looking stuffy? Build a new complex.

We love things too much because we want too much. I can't defend Roman philosophy as a complete intellectual system. But it seems that because they had fewer materials than we did, they put so much effort into creating their art and architecture. I cannot think of a single modern structure that can compare to the Colosseum. The Baths at Caracalla are produced from more thought and beauty than even the best malls.

In one section of the Baths, the floor mosaic was intact. We - afraid to sit on two thousand years of history - stepped on it instead. It was a glorious ancient manhole, covered with Clark's and Converse, fur boot and black flat.

Reluctant to leave Caracalla, we meandered around the gardens and made a new friend. Diocletian danced through Elena's legs and made his courtesy to each of us in turn, prompting a series of Ooohs! and hand sanitizer.

I wonder what Diocletian thinks about his home. I thought it was spell-binding.

Pix from St Peters

The basilica from the piazza.
This thing is huge.

To the right of this pictures there lies a dead pope. Yes. A dead pope.

This is La Pieta', one of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures.

Italianisms: Or The After-Effects of Angry Pasta

We charge our iPods by plugging them into the television and letting them hang. They look like $250 fruit swinging by a white vine from a TV-tree. When they are charged, Allison and I act like the monkeys and swoop in for the prize.

Ordering pizza resembles shopping for clothes. My favorite pizza place sells pizza a taglio, pizza by the cut. I walk into the tiny restaurant every day around 12:30, and point to the pizza I want. At this point in time, the pizza is huge and rectangular like a big lego block. The hurried workers place their cutters at one point. Qui? they ask. Here? Sometimes I say si, sometimes piu'. It's important to find the right fit.

They then weigh the pizza, hand me a receipt to give to the cashier and heat it up in the oven. The cashier, a stylin' dude in his late twenties with floppy hair, looks at the receipt and decides what would be easiest for him to charge. 3.86 euro? It's easier to charge 3.80 and just hand me twenty centesimi.

Often, we speak the most Italian to our camierieri (waiters) and cashiers. Some are awesome, like Davide. Davide resembles an aging Daniel Craig if Daniel Craig was skinny and had five kids and a good sense of humor. He asked us if we spoke Italian. Our answer: un po', a little. He told Nooreen brava for ordering white wine with her pasta and fish, and silently judged the rest of us for ordering Coke.

Davide told us he would memorize all of our names in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later (Roman time), he grabbed his coworker and said, Elena - Marranda - Maria - Gabriella - Nooreen. His co-worker then pointed to each of us in turn and said, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday. We stayed an extra five minutes just to say good-bye to Davide.

Other times, our conversations are less fluent. Most of my grocery store talk goes like this:

Cashier: Ciao.
Me (trying to be Italian): Ciao.
Cashier: Tu vuoi un bag?
Me: Sorry?
Cashier: Tu vuoi un bag?
Me: Um, si. Sure. Si.
Cashier: Do you wanna bag?
Me: Yeah. Si.
Cashier: No. Too big (the denomination of the euro bill).
Me: No ho any smaller.

Cashier: mumbled curse in Italian

Our conversations with each other go similarly. After all, we'd be pazza to not go comprare that borsa that we just saw, it was blue and fifty percent in saldi and mio Dio did you dimenticare the compiti? Woops, you just got penne all'arrabbiata all over your giacca.

Studying abroad. Nothing like it.

Heading to Hogwarts -- Umm, St. Peter's

Basilica: from Latin, from Greek basilikē hall, from basilikē oikia the king's house, from basileus king; see basil

(Dictionary.com)

The Vatican is Hogwarts for Catholics and art lovers. Never have the two groups been so pleased simultaneously, except perhaps during the Counter-Reformation. Traveling to Piezza di San Pietro is a little bit like traveling to the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: we were chattering so much on the bus that the driver kept shouting, "FERMATA! FERMATA! FINE! GET OFF HERE!" Or something like that.

We kept talking until the basilica came into view - and words after that were both superfluous and spoken.

We paid 15 euros to get into the Vatican Museums. There are 4 miles of galleries, stretching in both time and space between ancient Egyptian collections and modern religious art. The artists are primarily Italian (except for the Egyptians, of course.) My museum buddy and I stumbled upon the statue of Laocoon and his sons. This violent, expressive work of art has been featured in several of my textbooks. The Vatican curators did not read my textbooks, since Laocoon stares angstily in a random corner of a sculpture garden. No fanfare, no major sign, just a poor dad, his kids and two hungry snakes hidden next to a pillar.

Rome is like this. Thanks to a modern attention span, nobody has enough energy to point out every work of art or architecture. One trips and BOOM! two thousand year old masterpiece. Thank goodness I trip a lot.

This is me in my favorite room, la Galleria delle Carte Geografiche. The gallery seems endless, with a sparkling gold ceiling and its walls stretched with enormous, beautiful maps of Italian regions. I spent this last semester working on maps in Renaissance literature, and I spent the thirty minutes in this gallery going "OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH! YOU SEE THAT? THAT'S A SEA! THAT'S A SEA! OH MY GOSH! IT'S A SHIP! IT'S A SHIP!" This was all shouted at Vatican-inappropriate levels in my squeaky-squeaky voice.

My museum buddies enjoyed the benches in this room.

From the moment we strolled into the museum steps, all signs pointed to la Capella Sistina. I thought (for a blonde moment) we were heading for the Sistine Hat (capello is hat, capella is chapel.) Marranda warned me that the Sistine is extraordinarily dark, that no photography is permitted, that much of it is under reconstruction, etc. My expectations were low and my experience was profound.

There is something special about this place. Even after the rooms of Raphael, even after miles of frescoes and paintings and maps, this chapel owns some glorious and non-quantitative quality, somehow unique. I don't know very much about Michelangelo, but I knew the famous outstretched hand of Adam was in this chapel. It is directly above one's head when standing in the middle of the chapel. I stood there for a while, I could have stood there for a long time. There is poetry in the fingers that nearly touch, but don't. A divine poetry.

I shall put up my St. Peter's pictures separately - this post is already long enough. For now, enjoy the blurry beauty of the Tiber at night, crossing over from Castel Sant'Angelo to the Centro Storico region of Rome. We did, avoiding the temptation of Hard Rock Cafe and overpriced French fries.

Nothing like fantastic pasta every night to make one crave one's own cultural starch.

Living in a Roman Holiday

The last three days I have kept mostly to the hotel and surrounding area, due to Roman fever (more like exhaustion and belated language exposure.) This has given me a moment to contemplate this Roman life.

PROTEINO, NO NO Italians are allergic to vegetables. They can stomach the occasional protein, but meat and fish cost significantly more euros to prohibit the poor college student from partaking. I bought some pistachios and started eating Nutella by the spoonful to catch a glimpse of health. Clementine peels have begun to gather in odd places in our room.

TUTTA LA PIZZA E LA PASTA That said, the pizza and pasta that we eat here is incredible. Real Roman pizza bears little resemblance to the American variety. The dough is risen, like a good Panera loaf, and baked to a crunchy perfection. Tomato sauce usually implies margherita pizza, with little dollops of mozzarella di bufala. The pasta can be divine if you find a good restaurant - my favorite remains gnocchi a sorrentina, potato dumplings with tomato sauce. Ravioli con spinaci is good too.

BOOM! Once in a while, we ambitious women like to access the internet. To use our computers, we have to buy volt converters (Italy runs on 220V.) I first tried using my dad's epic green Fuji multi-volt converter to plug in my alarm o'clock. Five minutes later, POOF! My alarm o'clock exploded. The wires were smoking as Allison ran frantically to our portiere to explain the "BOOM" in Italian. Apparently, "Made in China" means "Made for Destruction" in Italian. I got a different converter and started using my iPod as an alarm.

IL "WC" Italian rooms do not have as many outlets as American ones. My roommate's does not work very well, so sometimes we utilize the best outlet in the house: in our bathroom. It is not uncommon for a friend to stop by and peek into the bathroom, to find a completely dressed ragazza sitting on the toilet plugged in and checking Facebook.

ROMAN TIME All the clocks are wrong here. If I walk down one of the large roads, like Via del Corso, I will see perhaps 7 public clocks and each will have a different time. First clock says 8pm. Second clock says 2pm. Third clock says 11:45am. No Romans seem particularly troubled about the clocks or make any attempt to correct them. It represents the true attitude of a two-thousand-year-old city... a few hours make no difference to the history books. An addictive teleology.

LA MUSICA POP We hear Katy Perry everywhere. Most American songs are outdated by a year or so, yet the Italians seem fascinated. It may have something to do with the fact that modern Italian pop stinks as musical fare and our exports fare better by comparison. Allison and I have made a nightly habit of watching Italian MTV, a series of non-stop music videos from England, America and Italia. We have not only categorized each character in the Katy Perry Firework video, but gotten sick of Nelly Furtado and fallen in love with Jovanotti's Tutto L'Amore Che Ho ("All the Love that I Have"). For your viewing pleasure, and until next time:

Jovanotti Music Video

Catacombe, Baby

We decided to walk to the catacombs.

Stop one: the supermarket in a super-sketchy neighborhood. Rome is covered in graffiti - it appears to be the new art form of the culture that once produced sculpture and Cicero. (Allison points out that a lot of Roman graffiti qualifies as art; I remain of the medieval mind that it is not.)

We passed the weeded tennis courts and dingy apartment complexes and BOOM: we entered a paradise. The paradise turned out to be the Via Appia Antica, or the Appian Way.

This is "the Queen of the Roads," one of the longest and oldest roads built by our Roman friends. Spartacus died here.

"Le catacombe," as they are called in Italian, sit under the beautiful countryside in Lazio. We couldn't take pictures in the catacombs, which date back to the 3rd century. Our guide was quick and efficient in guiding us through the tomb of more than 500,000 Christians. Burials began in the late 3rd century - nine popes and 56 martyrs lay in Le Catacombe di Santo Callisto.

Walking down into the catacombs, I was afraid that the pressure of 36 feet would start a panic attack. Instead, it felt peaceful down there. The walls are (surprisingly?) sound, the stone silent and somehow content.

The frescoes surprised me; their vitality is matched by their fading glory. Tombs were decorated with all kind of scenes - some of saints like Polycarp, others with near-Bacchanalian images of wine and lounging Romans.

500,000 dead. It felt a little bit like a family tomb.

On a lighter note, SPQR is everywhere here. Even when you pass a manhole, it is a manhole that expresses the wishes of the Senatus Populusque Romanus.

Le catacombe lie just outside the walls of Rome. You can see a hint of the ancient wall in this picture.

Via Appia Antica was a slice out of another world, a place where Horace and Cicero fled (maybe?) to think and to pick grapes and tease slaves. More than one friend said, on our two-hour walk there, "this doesn't even feel like Rome." I disagreed. This felt a lot like Rome.

I Will Foro Romano

Foro Romano was an out-of-body experience.

Running around -- or sloughing, as it was the afternoon and we had spent an hour looking for lunch -- in the graveyard of civilization took more than my head away. The ruins stand without much decoration or protection, a visual echo of a greater past. The intact temples and standing columns (Ionic? Doric? Corinthian?) are impossible to photograph. No human creation except the naked eye can capture the soul of Constantine's Basilica - its size, or its voice.

Other ruins were less serious. Our group discovered that the scattered pieces of priceless marble - scattered like post-wedding confetti all over the Forum and Palatine Hill - made for excellent resting spots for weary feet.

For 12 euros, one gains access to the Foro Romano, the Colosseo and Palatino. The Colosseum brought out great emotion in us... or at least, great acting inspired by Russell Crowe.

The view from Palatine Hill is inexpressible. You can see all of Rome, or all of Rome that matters. This city has changed the world.

This is by no means the only picture of the Colosseum, but it is mine. The pictures fail. All pictures fail to capture this.
There is something of a soul about these ruins. The ancient Romans had vision, they had artistic perfection. They killed over 9000 animals in this buildings in one 117-day killing spree. They killed Christians. They killed slaves. And somehow they understood something about humanity and its possibility.

Modern Rome has lost that. I love this city, but the real ruins are not ticketed.

Gelato with the Witch

Golitti's: if Willy Wonka was Italian, he would work here. The sleek dark-wood panels and winding countertops made me think I was ordering a wedding gown and not gelato. I ordered a scoop of cioccolato fondente and stracciatella along with the free panna (whipped cream) in a ciocolatto-dipped cone. Gelato is the new ambrosia of the gods. I got it all over my face.

Along our walking tour of Rome today - a feat that included most of the major sights - we stopped by Piazza Navona. The beautiful plaza played host to thirty or forty vendors selling Epifania-related gifts. Epifania is tomorrow, a holiday where the good witch (Befana) drops candy into their socks. Mini-Befanas, complete with creepy white hair, red eyes and broomstick, were on sale and I bought one for 4 euros.

We took our gelatos to the Pantheon - but outside, the piazza rivalled its main attraction. A random Italian boy jumped into our photo, laughed and then ran away. We have named him Luigi.

Scattered Thoughts Upon Arrival

It amazed me how much Rome looked like Orlando.

Driving in from Roma-Fiumicino, our bus passed palm trees, sketchy ten-story apartment buildings, farmland, telephone wires and more palm trees. Only the occasional terracotta villa, placed surprisingly in the middle of an apartment complex or perched underneath a grove of disgruntled trees, signified that we might, actually, be in Rome. The signs helped too.

My first piece of pizza in Italy: a margherita. My roommate Allison took me to a small cafe, run by a delightful plump Italian woman in a pink tracksuit and her twentysomething daughter. The pizza was pretty good; I'm still on the lookout for the perfetto forno a legno.

Once we hit the Roman ruins on our way in, I thought I was going to cry. They strike you - hit you on the head with a two-thousand-year-old hammer. The baths of Caracalla were the first ones we saw, but the Colosseum is what what turned our heads.