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.