Fall Break, AKA "Fliff Week"

*note: “fliff” is the sound money makes when you throw it down on vacation, “not even countin’ it.”

As I look back on Fliff Week and ahead to Hell Week (every semester has one—that week where you have tests and presentations and quizzes all the time, for some reason all at once), I am quite pleased. I feel like I haven’t been to school in weeks, and between Sicily-Trip and fall break, I haven’t! Fall really has come to Rome. The trees are turning now and the leaves prepare to fall. Timing seems to have worked out quite well for me to send some clothing home.

With the end of the Sicily trip there were a precious few days of settling down and recovering before I was on the road again. Monday, I showed off a little of the Eternal City to my parents before a demon called jet-lag laid its claim. We were up bright and early on Tuesday to see the best preserved ruin of all time, Pompeii, which was just astounding. I am glad our class will be going there again because there was way too much to it for a classics major to handle at once.

Mom in the Pompeii amphitheatre. Coolest dead city ever.

I was really excited to see the amphitheatre, though, and the general layout of the city, as well as some of the temple bases. Plus, it’s always cool to share ancient stuff with your folks. ^_^

The next day we toured the Amalfi coast, taking the CliffsToTheSea highway buses which performed impressive maneuvers at great heights. The views were positively spectacular, and I loved the city of Sorrento where we stayed. Positano was neat, too, and Amalfi and Ravello were both lovely. And everything was filled with lemons! Our hotel had the coolest staff, from our waiter Robert De Nero to the epigraphist bar dude to the enthusiastic hotel owner lady. The day left me content and relaxed.

A view down the cliffs from the bus window

Dad in Ravello, stowing the camera

Lunch in Ravello overlooking Amalfi

The train ride back to Naples to get on the train back to Rome

Our trip back to Rome was pretty relaxed too, and we took a walk on the Janiculum Hill before I turned in to get ready for Vienna. I was skeptical about the possibility of it being a good time since I had to get up at 4:15am to get started on the trip (to be at the airport to catch the 7:15 flight). But I put myself to bed super early in the hopes that I would still get a full night’s sleep, just earlier than usual.

I did accomplish this goal for the most part, and Greg and I got to the airport. The plane was a bit delayed and we finally found our hostel (right next to the train station bus stop) around 11:15 or so. It is the nicest hostel I could have imagined, pretty new, with a bar downstairs, a breakfast room, computers for coin-operated use, and a pillow pit.

Pillow. Pit. With hammocks. And mini-desks. It's like my dream.

The room was equally above expectation, with our fairly new bunk beds and each having our own locker. Linda had arrived at the hostel about an hour before us, and Brooke appeared a little while after. She’d been in Vienna all week, and she brought us to the palace which we toured until one, when we met her and her friend who is studying in Vienna this semester.

Later in the day, having bought roasted chestunuts. It was already feeling a lot like Christmas in Vienna, to me anyway. This is what Bert and Brooke look like. And they aren't even posing.

It was just after going outside to walk around with Brooke that I realized the Vienna trip was going to be a great success. Although we had not planned a great deal, Greg had a pocket travel guide, and Brooke had a friend. But also, even though it was pretty chilly, Vienna was shaping up to be the most beautiful city I had ever seen.

Why fight city hall when city hall is THIS NICE?

There are sculptures everywhere, and fountains. The streets are wide and clean, and the people are all really friendly. There is art everywhere, and no graffiti. And, in the way that there is the occasional smell of something unpleasant.. like trash or pee or something in Rome as you walk around, in Vienna the lingering smell is.. flowers. I have no idea how. There were roses blooming in the rainy cold. The buildings are all beautiful, even when they aren’t anything of monumental importance.

You know. Random street. Actually that thing is the Staatsoper. And that's Bert.

But this really is a random street (Greg and Brooke included).

Brooke’s friend Bert was a lifesaver. He had a lot of great ideas about things I’d never even heard about. We saw the opera Elektra at the Staatsoper for two Euro on Friday night, which I’d heard of doing, but he led us. We also climbed to the top of St. Stefansdom during Friday afternoon, and looked around some other churches (a baroque and a gothic). We walked around a lot, and Greg dropped 150 euro on a book he’d been looking for that he happened to see in a store window (an anthology of Greek poetry). Before the opera, we had dinner, and I had the Wiener schnitzel, which is really like the tastiest fried pork chop ever, and sauerkraut, which was a lot better than Vandy makes, and some really good beer.

We climbed this tower.




And this was the view.

The opera was really cool. We had spots behind the tallest dude ever, but the set was amazing, and the whole thing took place at the feet of this colossal statue whose boot was on the world, I think Agamemnon (oh, btw, Elektra is based on a story from ancient Greece. Word.), with a piece of the statue’s face lying on the ground. It was awesome.

Saturday was rainy and really cold, so Linda, Greg, and I spent the morning in the art history museum, which was really cool and housed the Gemma Augustea which is, I didn’t know, the size of a plate basically. I learned about it in my class last year and had no idea it was in Vienna.

You can see better pictures of this in my art history books.

This is in them too.

And this is AUGUSTUS!

That afternoon, it cleared up some, and we went to the Vienna cemetery on the outskirts of town, where all these composers are buried (or in the case of Mozart, memorialized). The cemetery was amazingly beautiful, but that might just be Vienna in general when it’s not freezing and rainy and snow-flurrying.

Beethoven to the left, Mozart in the center, Schubert on the right. There are two more (Brahms andStrauss not visible along the right)

After that, Bert took us to a really cool place on the outskirts of town opposite the cemetery, the name of which I can’t remember.. but it’s a place where you go to try the new wine, and they are only open in certain seasons. We met our first non-English speaker, and sat in the fully wooden lodge feeling very content and very German with our light and tasty new white wine.

Sweet.

We tried to catch a concert in similar fashion to the opera on Saturday night after Brooke and Linda left to catch planes and trains, but it was sold out by the time we got there. Bert suggested we go look around the theatre because it has really nice paintings on the walls and ceilings, and there was a play going on so we could get in the front door. The people there told us to get upstairs (where the paintings were?) we had to buy a ticket for 1.50 euro, so we did, and whenever we showed the official people the ticket they gave us, they ushered us along until we were directed right into the top tier of the inside of the theatre.

Where Romeo and Juliet was taking place just below in German. On closer inspection, we had been sold standing-room tickets to the show and let in late. Whatever? We sat down and partook of the craziest version of R&J I ever have seen. I was okay with Juliet’s twin wandering around (her soul? I am not sure.. I thought she was a narrator at first) but when the foam-rubber body parts cascaded from the ceiling near the end, I was totally confused. It was pretty awesome, though.

We only had a few minutes to find the paintings, but we did see a few before the theatre people shut down the place on us. Greg and I returned to the hostel, where our roommates were decidedly less polite (and some of them less clothed) than the night before. We grabbed our free drinks in the basement bar and then I played in the pillow pit until I was ready to crash.

Our travel morning was also pleasant. Things went really smoothly and the flight attendant was the nicest dude ever. We caught the right buses right on time in Rome and returned to the Centro.

I’m going to have a lot of work to do this week, but I’m really glad that my break was such a wonderful success! I went from warm south to cold north, where people were swimming in the Mediterranean to where it was snowing. I’ve seen some amazing things these two weeks, and worn out in the process. My legs are still trying to find it in their hearts to forgive me. As are my feet. And now, time for bed.

Sicily: the short version

Well, the Sicily trip was certainly a trip. If that was class at all, it was tourism 101. We are classics majors: we brake for “archaeological site” signs. Our bus left early Friday morning, down the western coast of Italy. Our first stop was Velia, which had an impressive excavation going on and an impressive view, but we students, who are actually monkeys disguised as students, were also quite excited by the middle-ages ruins of a castle, which none of us were supposed to climb, but some of us did.

in a skirt, no less

That night we arrived in Paestum, which we toured the next morning for its amazingly well preserved temples. In ancient times, Paestum was well known for its roses, but nowadays it is all about the ruins.

artistic

Not only three big still-standing temples, which dominate the landscape, but also both Roman and Greek (since Greeks occupied the site first) structures like forum, bouleterion, and houses.

Vandy all the way

Our next town was Reggio, near the toe of Italy, after which we got on a ferry to the island of Sicily! Our first stop in Sicily was the hilltop Taormina, which also has an old Greek theatre converted into a Roman one. I saw a middle aged Japanese woman there with purple hair, but her tour group left before I could ask her to pose with me for a photo. Once again, fabulous views. The Greeks really like to have their theatres with views behind.

Me behind the theatre.. toldja so.

Our next day was in Siracuse, where we visited Ortigia and the spring of Arethusa. I was especially excited for this because Ovid tells about the spring’s beginning. We also saw a temple of Athena-now Catholic church, which was really cool. Gotta love the conversion and preservation of sacred spaces. There was also a ruined temple to Apollo nearby. I got some of my best postcards in front of that, one of which had been (unbeknownst to me) struck with bird crap on the back of it. Wonder which lucky person will receive that one?

I forgot my camera on the bus when we went to the archaeological park, but it was cool too, complete with a huge Greek theatre, amphitheatre, and quarries. We also got to explore an ancient defensive castle. All these were built by Greek tyrants before Romans ruled the island.

That night we had the best dinner of the whole trip, even though the hotel where we stayed had weak plumbing at best (if you were patient, the shower trickle really would return.. you just had to stand there and wait for it), and the next morning visited the site of Morgantina, where apparently my art history professor from Vandy had done some excavating! Then we got to see some awesome mosaics in a very rich someone’s house. But unlike a lot of places that wanted to exert their Greekness, this person used a lot of African themes, reminding us how close Sicily really is to North Africa!

mosaic madness

We arrived that night at Agrigento and had some time to relax at the beach, which was lovely. It was chilly, so I took a walk with two other Emilys and then we read Harry Potter aloud. The hotel in Agrigento was not only clean, beautiful, and in perfect working order (not only a working shower, but even a shower curtain present), but they even had a lovely garden and good food.

The sites of Agrigento were no less impressive. There is a ridge with temples running all along it which is one of the first things we saw on our bus approach the evening before. And again, there were amazing views! We saw four temples in Agrigento and then moved into the museum where I saw yet another artistic incarnation of my favorite Latin fable: Cupid and Psyche!

so cute! I’ll tell you all about the story of why I love this so much when I show the other thousand pictures I’ve collected of them

Our next stop was Selinunte, which was a big deal for me because I was to give a report there with my partner Brooke on an enormous ruined temple there, “Temple G” which is comparable to a big temple at Agrigento. Everyone loved our temple because, as I mentioned, we’re actually monkeys, and since the gigantic structure was ruined by an earthquake in the middle ages, it isn’t even roped off, so we get to climb all over it.

monkeys

All in all, it was a long day but a lot of fun. Notice the size of the column capital that I’m using as a bench. Temple G was quite large, in addition to being unfinished.

that used to be at the top of a column

The next day (Thursday? I lost track) we went to the Cusa limestone quarries whence came the rock to build the Selinunte temples, in which there are still column drums destined for Temple G (this is part of how we know it was unfinished).

We went into two more museums to see some more bronzes that had been pulled out of the sea (maybe thrown overboard to save from pirates? Arr..) and then we got on an even smaller ferry for Motya, a little island off the west coast of Sicily. I am of the opinion that the water was shallow enough for us to have waded the distance but that might have taken too long.

On Motya there are ancient Phonecian things, so not really any Roman remains, and not really so much of the Greek, either. It was a really cool place where we also found the cutest “centro dog” yet. There seemed to be dogs at every site which would follow us around until we bored them.

this one was actually still a puppy and therefore adorable

The museum contained some really cool markers of graves, too.

we discussed the possibility of baby sacrifice

Next stop was one of my favorites, Segesta. The temple still standing there was supposedly built by people native to Sicily, perhaps an attempt to impress the Greeks. It has stunning views and was either never finished or was a fake temple (no inner room, no roof, etc.) but I liked it best! There was also a Greek theatre on another hillside, complete with awesome view, again.

Best temple ever!

Theatre + view

Friday we went to a lovely church in a place called Monreale, near Palermo. A wedding occurred while we were touring the mosaic-encrusted church but they didn’t seem to mind us as long as we stayed out of their way, and it was very lovely. There was also a cloister attached to the church, with really cool combinations of styles.

cloister!

We spent the rest of the day exploring Palermo and going to its museum, which was hard to find only because the people living there seemed to believe it did not exist. Palermo, like a lot of bigger cities, is both very cool and kind of dirty.

Palermo church coolness

That night we got on the biggest ferry of all which would take us to Naples overnight. I had previously made jokes about our ferry boats being cruise ships, but this one came rather close, and I was so excited. No karaoke or discoteca, unfortunately, but we did have a good time sitting in the lounge and I could have spent the entire night leaning out at the railing. Too bad it was dark the whole time, I bet the water was gorgeous!

you could see the ocean behind me if there were any light at all

The overall experience of the trip was intense awesomeness and also intense closeness with all the Centristi. Living out of a suitcase is always fun, and the bus rides were sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes uncomfortable. I really enjoyed it and managed to buy postcards here and there as we moved across the island. There will be a whole program dedicated to just Sicily and now I can see why. Each of the sites we visited could have taken a week (like we are doing with the forum), but we summarized and moved along. Saw too many awing things to process in the time we had, so this might take a while. I have way more photos to share, too, but it takes a long time to load them. Anyone who volunteers to see them might have to suffer an explanation of their significance though, so beware!

That was the short version!

Killer

I would just like to mention that I have become very, very good at killing mosquitoes.

I just batted one out of the air with a water bottle. I spotted it walking down the stairs. I hit it out of the air and stepped on it on the ground.

I have killed others in the garden and fed them to the fish in the pond.

I have killed others while they made attempts on the limbs of my friends. I have also crushed them in midair, and onto tables, much to my dismay for the grossness that follows that.

Others complain of mosquito bites. I exhort constant vigilance.

In other news, I will not be bringing my computer to Sicily. This means that from after this post until maybe Sunday, I will be more or less absent.

The real inconvenience, though, is that I won't have anywhere to download photos off my camera. Which means I have only three hundred and eight photos for a whole week in Sicily. Crap.

The other side

The other side of the Florence trip was somewhat less amazing, as Ashley and I got lost pretty badly after walking down some more lovely little streets. If we hadn't been offered help by a friendly passer-by (a lady whose husband was pushing a stroller.. aww) we never would have found ourselves again because we were already off the map and headed in the absolute wrong direction, with no bus stops in sight.

Since we had done nothing but walk for roughly two straight days, my legs felt something like they were going to fall off of me. We made it back to the hostel and went to the train station. We bought a ticket for a moderately slow train scheduled to leave at 6:04, but there was no listed platform. Eventually I cornered a man in a green jacket who explained to me that the train I wanted did not exist. Sweet. He suggested I either upgrade to a EuroStar ticket or take the slow train leaving at 7:09. I stood in line for a while but when it became clear that the line would not move in time for me to get on the EuroStar impending departure, I elected the slow train.

This was, in retrospect, a possible mistake. But I am the type who works harder, not smarter! So I did what I thought was right instead of trying to get away with pleading ignorance on the EuroStar. The slow train this time was not fun or filled with lovely views, as it was dark by the time we actually got out of the city. It was long, torturous, tired, and Ashley had gotten on a different train because she had wanted to track down food beforehand.

I had wanted to get back and go to bed early to make up for the sleep lost in getting to/being in Florence. The train was scheduled to arrive at Termini at 10:42. So excited was I at 10:45 when the train stopped that I hopped off in line, and only once I had gone down some steps did I realize I was in the Tiburtina train station. I saw a large M outlined in blue and headed straight for the Metro, tired and thoroughly disgusted with myself. I made it to Termini and felt very glad to see familiar sights, and to know exactly where to go to get on the bus I needed to take me home again.

I was the last of the Florence-goers to arrive back at the centro. But, I did make it, and Florence was in fact amazing, so I would say, it's worth it.

Firenze

So I decided at the last minute to go to Florence, and Ashley, one of the more spontaneous and willing Centristi said she’d go too. I’m really glad I had her with me. I might have done a lot more things the hard way rather than the smart way without her.

I’m going to write about it a bit before class starts.. maybe add pictures later when there is more time.

We got up super early to get to the train station in time to leave on the 7:14 train. We made it just fine and purchased the tickets from little electronic carrels, all very smooth and easy. We had elected the “slow train” for its cheapness, so the entire thing took about three and a half hours, two longer than if we had taken EuroStar. But I enjoyed the views I did get to see, when I wasn’t dozing out because of the sleep of which I had deprived myself by getting up so early after going to bed admittedly two hours later than I had planned to.

The train was a bit sketchy and it made a lot of stops. First it was pretty empty, just us and this cute couple who made out and snuggled the entire time right across from our line of sight. Then our car got flooded with noisy German girls and I had to talk myself down from being pissed off. It wasn’t their fault I wanted to sleep.

Finally, we rolled into Florence at 11 or so. This is where Ashley became more than a friend, but really an asset. She used her cell phone to call the others already in Florence and find out how to get to the hostel. We wandered around til we found the correct bus (I wish I had taken a photo of the graffiti that said “I love you four ever.” but I did not) and bought a one-day bus pass, and made our way to the hostel where we dropped off our stuff and started meandering around Florence.

We walked around for a long time, visiting the Duomo first, touring the inside, and walking down a lot of streets and looking at stuff in the street markets for sale. We decided to go back to the Academia Galleria later in the evening because the line was so long (free museum day, remember) when we first found it.

We also went to this park next to a fortress wall that was really cool. All day I took a ridiculous amount of photos, of streets and buildings, the river and its bridges, and a few peeks of the hills around Florence.

We did go back to the Galleria and found the line much more manageable, and got to see Michelangelo’s David, among other things. I really liked the half-finished statues by Michelangelo as well, because they give some idea of how this stuff is made.

David is absolutely beautiful. I never really got what the big deal was, or what all the fuss was about until I was standing there staring up slack-jawed. I think his right hand is my favorite part of the whole thing.. so much emotion in that curled hand. There were other works, paintings and things on the second floor too, but mostly we walked around a plaster cast exhibit, and tried to go back to the musical instrument exhibit, but the museum was closing, almost time for dinner.

Ashley and I took a bus to nowhere we knew and ended up in a cute little park where the cutest dog we’ve ever seen was playing with a little toddler. Finally, we decided to go back to the hostel and meet the others.

We finally found the other group (whom we’d eluded all day.. they were participating in a Florence Wine Event, a city-wide wine tasting on our side of the river) and went to a lovely dinner with them. We weren’t done with dinner until about eleven that night, so we just went back to the hostel, full and happy and in Florence.

I met some Japanese girls in our room who I surprised by busting out with “Where are you from?” in polite Japanese. They gave me their e-mail addresses and I gave them mine after a brief whispered conversation, as many of those in the room were sleeping already.

The next morning dawned pale and grey and like the one before, I woke wondering “what am I doing, and why am I doing this?” I guess I am less a morning person than I like to pretend. But after getting up and pulling my stuff together, taking the sheets off the bed, and getting a tart and caffe latte in a nearby pastry shop, I was ready to go and so excited that I had gotten up at like 7 on vacation. The morning air was delightful, and the sun on the river a real treat. We went to the Uffici, the Offices, which is a museum of a lot of the stuff owned by the Medici family.

I was thinking, sweet. Renessaince paintings on free museum day in Florence. Can’t go wrong with that I suppose.. we got there at like 8:10 when the museum opened at 8:15. There was already a line, but it wasn’t nearly so bad as it would later be (our friends who had planned but did not execute a similar get-up-early course of action stood in line for roughly three and a half hours). We waited for about an hour before entering. No photos were allowed in the museum proper, but we took a few in the stairwell without flash. Ashley’s emperor name is Commodus, and her wife’s bust was in the hallway.

So we get to the top of the stairs and I am totally expecting some cool Renessaince paintings, which are lovely and about which I know little, when I turn around and am face to face with Marcus Agrippa. In marble, of course. I stop and stare and realize he is flanked on either side by busts of Tiberius and the man Augustus himself. I had seen photos of these very busts in my textbooks on sculpture. I rather like Agrippa, as it is. And for a moment I felt close to crying.

We look at some info plaques to find out that these busts are in fact original and ancient, and have mostly just been restored. Some of the statues that line the entire hallway of the floor are copies. But most of the emperors are not. We did look at some of the more famous paintings, and I really liked Botticelli and some of the other amazing, amazing things I saw there, but Ashley and I worked our way patiently and lovingly around the room of classical antiquities while so many visitors glanced at them and kept walking.

Some of the Christian suffering paintings are a bit disturbing. Others are really lovely. I especially liked the ones where Madonna and Child look like a happy family. It is in a way a crying shame that we weren’t allowed to take photos, but it did in a way keep me from spending the entire day behind the lens of my camera, overfilling my memory card, etc.

Okay.. that’s all for now, gotta go to class!