Emily Blogs Italy

BDE: A Triumph of Elegance

2009-03-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

BDE = "Best Day Ever"

Our very last Forum field trip became our Centro Prom. This was an idea developed mostly by Nick and Hanner (my Centro roommate!), and allowed/endorsed by our professors. The natural result was that half of our photos were of the scholarly things upon which we were supposed to be focused, and the other half were more of this variety:

Classic prom poses were struck in front of ancient ruins.

Tri-Em-virate?

But, no matter how awesome we all looked, we were still on a learning excursion. So, this is the Basilica of Constantine, not actually built by Constantine.

(just re-appropriated by him when he took power)

Don't quote me on all the details here. I am having trouble recalling the facts without my notes, writing this more than a year after the fact.

Something memorable, noteworthy, and not found in books, happened on our journey from the Basilica to the Arch of Constantine. We were re-united with King of King. Or rather, Brookie was re-united with him.

Can this get better?

Guys in gladiator outfits are always hanging around important tourist landmarks like the Colosseum offering to take photos with people for a small fee. Most of them know a few handy phrases in lots of languages. Once when I walked past a few of them, they spoke to me first in English, then in German. They kind of try pegging what ethnicity you look like, and offer to take photos with you.

The more animated and charismatic dudes probably get more business. One day, when we were in the vicinity, one of them brandished his sword and shouted heroically at us (nothing in particular, just a sort of "Raaaa!"). Brookie, being who she is, roared back at him. He then yelled "King of King!!" And brandished his sword some more. It was duly hilarious and we went on our way.

On Prom day, we saw him again, the same guy, whom we'd now nicknamed King of King. I don't think he remembered his warrior maiden, but it didn't matter much. Our entire group busted out the cameras to get our euro's worth documenting their hilarious game of heterosexual chicken.

(Yes, it does get better)
"I'd almost pay a euro to see that." - Prof. Roman

But.. right, right. We were on a field trip. Students had presentations to give! So we turned our attentions to the Arch of Constantine.

Not up to the classical standard, if only for being composed of chunks of other monuments?

Our Triumph of Elegance proceeded to the Lateran church, where we were to eat lunch and tour the premises. On the walk up the hill, I found a big orange flower and decided it was just for me, just for prom.

Totally awesome.

The old senate doors are preserved here.

Okay, not quite this. This is the front facade of the Lateran. Impressive!

Here are those big ole bronze doors...

But while we at lunch on the steps outside in the joyful sunlight, something even more awesome happened.

Stephanie in her lovely dress is for some reason asked not to sit on the bench where she was before.

A fire engine arrives. Concern mingles with curiousity, and Emily G points out that the guy in orange looks like one of those guys who helps land planes. Soon, she is proved absolutely right.

So.. wait, is that thing going to land right here?!

I take some video footage, complicated only by the fact that the wind hits me. Since I am wearing a dress, I am suddenly overtaken by the concern that my dress is about to fly up over my head.. hence the disturbance right when the wind edge hits us:

Priceless.

In addition to wind, we are struck with lots of dust. My apple is a lot less appetizing at this point.

I'm not sure which is more entertaining.. what's happened, or Chris's reaction to it all.

Our professor talks to one of the "Wigils," a fireman, who looks suspiciously like his name should be Fabio.

...

She discovers that there is not in fact a fire or medical emergency, but rather, it is a particular saint's day, the patron of the firemen, and they are bringing all their old and new equipment to show off as tribute.

But, we are adults. We can still focus on the learning that is at hand. We are informed about the paintings inside the main area of the Lateran.

Inside Lateran!

We are totally not done. After this we still have 36 more churches! Actually, just two. And an arch.

Another good example of that ancient/modern thing they have going on in Rome.

An additional note from the editor: I didn't even remember that I'd already written a bit about this. Find that here!

Monte Testaccio and Vatican Museums

2009-02-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Our next field trip was Monte Testaccio, fondly called “Trash Mountain,” by me. We had seen the outside of this place much earlier in the semester, but were’ allowed to climb Trash Mountain on this trip! While we toured it, our fearless leader went to stand in line for us at the Vatican Museum (the line itself is legendary).

The view from 'Trash Mountain' is good.. and you can see some of the pieces of pottery at the bottom!

Monte Testaccio is made up of pottery. Broken pottery, specifically, pieces of ancient amphorae used to transport oil. They re-used the wine ones, but for some reason, oil-holders were smashed and piled up here, back in the day. It’s a great time for scholars who can figure out when the amphorae were used, and from where they came! The Roman Empire reached some pretty great distances..

The pile itself if pretty wide.

SHERDS!

After that, we were on our way to the Vatican Museum. There is far too much awesomeness contained there to have seen even half of it, let alone post it all here, but we did what we could. Our line experience was nonexistent, and we went right in to see the good stuff.

In one of the first rooms we found this, from the tomb of a family of builders. Sweet crane, eh? I was excited because we had studied this in art history at Vandy.

Then we saw him. Primaporta Augustus.

For Classicists, Primaporta Augustus is a big deal. He's got a lot of symbolism going on in this one little pose. First off, he's studly and authoritative. Then you've got the conservative haircut, with the breastplate depicting the return of the standards from the Parthians. And that's a little Cupid by his foot, mythologically speaking, his cousin. Nice and small compared to big, awesome Augustus, right?

We react to his majesty.

I really enjoyed the Nile River depicted here. Rivers are often seen in a reclining position, surrounded by things that make them special. Check out the Sphinx and other Egytptian stuff with this guy.

Also part of the Nile sculpture: Babies can totally handle alligators.

I've seen this before...

Laocoon and his sons being eaten by serpents is a really famous sculpture at the Vatican Museum. It's from the Aeneid story, wherein Laocoon the priest warns his fellow Trojans not to trust the Giant Wooden Horse the Greeks have left. The Greek suggestion is that it's a gift for Minvera, but Laocoon doesn't buy it. He throws his spear into the side of it. Shortly thereafter he is killed by serpents which come out of the sea and hide in Minvera's temple shortly after devouring him. What Trojan could ignore that kind of a sign?

Augustus. With patera.

Augustus liked to portray himself as a pious guy. This is him with his head covered, in ritual manner, and there is a patera, a little dish used for offerings, in his hand. He wanted to be immortalized making libations to the gods.

I took some pictures of the paintings after we were turned loose, but they didn't come out well.

This is my "I WAS THERE!" photo.

Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, and the Villa D'Este

2009-02-11T17:29:00.000-08:00

I certainly don’t want to leave this blog as a testament to my not finishing it. Now that I have some time, I definitely want to finish out what I can of the semester in Italy blog!

I last left you with the third week of November, 2007 (!) so I take up with what followed.

As autumn deepened, we went to Hadrian’s villa. It turned out to be a beautiful fall day, and we even got to see some fall color.

Ah, autumn...

Hadrian was considered a Greek-loving emperor, because he had a beard, and a boy lover named Antinous. He also had a really sweet villa. There are a lot of anecdotal stories about his designing some of the architecture himself, and having the master Apollodorus condescend to him. One of his “bad” ideas was the ‘gourd dome.’

I think it's kinda cool, actually.

His villa also had baths, a little theatre, dining halls, and this peculiar space, the actual purpose of which scholars still debate. Some say it was a theatre space, and others a quaint little getaway. It’s a round little island house surrounded by a moat, which used to have a removable bridge, they say.

Dare you to cross the moat!

Whatever it is, Hadrian’s villa is most famously recognized for the Euripus. This is a long thin reflecting pool (kind of like in front of Washington Monument) surrounded by Egypt themed things. Hadrian’s lover drowned in the Nile, so this space was sort of dedicated to him. Here it is from the back end:

Apparently, he used to dine here.

And, me being artsy with the camera near the top end:

The Eurpipus was very, very awesome.

After that, we hurried to nearby Tivoli, to check out some temples from the Republican period.

We were basically in people’s doorway to do this. It’s amazing how ancient stuff exists right alongside regular people and their homes.

This was fascinating as the temples we could not access because of the gate.

Thereafter, we went to the Villa D’Este in Tivoli, to see the copious fountains and get an idea of what gardens and water features might have done to enhance the lavish setting of Hadrian’s villa.

My love for this tree is very great.

From above, the Rome Ship fountain.

This is depicting the myth of Pegasus who created a spring by striking the ground with his hoof.

This portrayal of Isis is meant to emphasize fertility and maternal aspect.

I really like the fountain-as-stair-rai

Hannah and Alice walk along the fountain wall.

The Villa D’Este is a popular spot of lovliness for Italians as well: Professoressa Colantoni’s first date with her now-husband was there!

what's the holdup?

2008-01-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

I planned to finish up posting about the end of the program during the early part of school, when things are calmer and not as crazily work-filled as the end of the semester.

That's not working out so well. Unfortunately, this blog is not the top of my priorities list these days. Look for periodic post updates, but don't hold your breath!

School's a rough lass.

More backposting - November's Third Week

2007-12-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Week three of November:

Tuesday was the 20^th and we went to the Forum of Nerva (AKA the Forum Transitorium because it is long and skinny), which was actually begun by Domitian, but he suffered the damnatio memoriae, so he couldn’t have his name on anything. It was headed by a temple to his patron goddess Minerva, which is a fun play on words with the emperor who followed him (Nerva!).

This would be the fourth of the imperial fora built at this time. (Caesar, Augustus, Forum of Peace by Vespasian). Not much is left, but there are two columns that can be seen pretty well from the side of the road. We went down into the forum, then traipsed across the Forum of Augustus to get to the Forum of Trajan, our next destination.

The particular guardian we had that day told us we could climb up to the temple to Mars Ultor, so of course we did so. This is me standing where the cult statue goes, trying to look vengeful.

Of all the fora, Trajan’s is the biggest. He built everything bigger. Trajan’s forum is part of a huge complex that includes two libraries on either side of his narrative column, in front of which was the Basilica Ulpia, in front of which was the forum proper, which had apse ends that interlocked with the markets of Trajan. This isn’t madness: this is Rome.

Anyway, the column of Trajan has a spiral staircase on the inside which leads to a platform at the top. There used to be a statue of Trajan on top of it all, but now it belongs to the Papacy, so I think it’s Paul who is up there.

Well ,we climbed it.

This is the view from the top! Or not really.

The top of that column is a pretty sweet vantage point. The markets are simultaneously well-preserved markets (or, maybe administrative offices, but we don’t know), a museum of stuff from the surrounding imperial fora, and a place to display modern art. It’s a pretty interesting combination.

One of the shops at ground level.. there are like four and a half levels

After Trajan died, Hadrian put his temple behind the column, so the entire package was complete. It’s also sort of set up like a military camp, which fits because Trajan was a military man.

Wednesday, we went back to Ostia, but stopped first at the nearby Portus (next to the port of Claudius), which was the additional port Trajan built, and Isola Sacra which had a lot of good examples of tombs. Portus is very utilitarian and well-designed, and as a town it eventually became more important than Ostia (in 350AD, Ostia was just a residential area, while Portus was the working port).

Claudius really liked rusticated columns!

The technology of the granaries there blows my mind, because we do something totally different today that I am not sure I understand.

Isola Sacra was like a tomb village in use from the second century BC until the fourth century AD., mostly places with niches for ash urns, but a few places for inhumation as well. Romans never buried people inside the city except in very special cases (a few emperors, for example). The tombs are non-monumental, so not as big and grandiose as the ones along the Appian Way, and they look mostly like little houses.

The Village.

Then we went back to Ostia, but we only had time to look at the Synagogue and Christian Basilica really quickly, and then go home.

Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, we went back to the Ara Pacis which had been closed before. It was less rainy and awful, and since Emily and I got there early, we also paid a visit to the Mausoleum of Augustus, which is in a lot worse shape than I would like for The Man himself, Augustus.. but you can’t have everything.

This is the entrance, taken from sticking my arm inside the gate. There’s a rose there, but I’m not sure if it’s for Augustus..

The Ara Pacis is absolutely dripping with propaganda, and it’s amazing and beautiful. I didn’t bring a notebook or take any notes on this day, but here’s me in front of the Tellus/Pax relief on the outer precinct wall.

OMG.

In the center with the thing over his head is my ancient boyfriend, Agrippa.

Then we went to the EUR, which was the museum of fake things, so nothing there was original, but it was so awesome to see mini models of so many things we’d actually walked through, and casts and models all next to each other so you could understand and compare. I feel like the EUR is the greatest museum for getting an all-in-one dose of Roman civilization and history.

A cast of part of the relief from Trajan’s column. I liked the scales.

Plastic model of Rome from the time of Constantine, which was huge

We didn’t have lunch that day since we were going to have the feast later on…!

!!!!

OMG feast!

I also went on the art history field trip that Friday and we saw some awesome stuff! (S. Luigi dei Francesi, S. Agostino, S. Maria Sopra Minerva—by my obelisk!)

Campania!! part two

2007-12-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

Day Five: Pompeii

Unfortunately, the fifth day was not as clear and bright as the one before. It began with drizzle and rain which was chilly and irritating.

It rained intermittently all day, so we took shelter as best we could under umbrellas and in structures with roofs. We saw a lot of sweet villas, but we didn’t see everything I had seen with my parents. We were let into the House of the Vettii though, and also Julia Felix (a big complex near the amphitheatre), where I (being last again) thought I was locked in, even though the gate was not fastened. We also returned to the House of the Faun.

Pompeii is interesting because it wasn’t even settled by Romans until the 80s BC, after Sulla took it over. It was originally an Oscan town with lots of other influences, and fought against Rome from 100BC forward.

Ever see that show Rome?

Some of my pictures are hard to see because most places did not allow flash, and were shadowed, not to mention the gloom of the day. We did get to go into the brothel and try to read the Greek and Latin inscriptions on the wall. It read more like the graffiti you find nowadays, and was sometimes even more vulgar! We had translations in our notes.

There is so much to see in Pompeii. We saw the Garden of Refugees, and the theatres, and the amphitheatre (we had our lecture in the tunnel because it poured then). Temples to Isis, Apollo, and Jupiter, and a temple so old no one knows to whom it was dedicated. Lots of houses, and a basilica and the forum. The dogs on site liked to hang out there, and were the best fed of all dogs on site I’d ever seen! One of them decided to do some impromptu archaeology at the ancient Doric temple.

Hahaha. .. NO! BAD!

So anyway.. the day was long and full of looking and listening and note-taking, and we were wandering halfway across the city toward our final destination which was next to our exit gate, the Villa of the Mysteries, the last stop, long awaited and very famous for the room where the frescoes show what seems to be an initiation rite of some kind.

And the sky just opened up. I had borrowed Hannah’s raincoat for the day, and I had my umbrella. Many lesser umbrellas succumbed to the wind, but I weilded my three-dollar Wal-Mart purchase well (actually adjusting it to the gusts) and it held up. Not that it mattered much. Head down into the wind, I was soaked anyway and wished I had worn my boots which, though they lack arch support, would have kept my feet dry.

It was ludicrous and we’d all been scattered, and no one could see anyone except those closest to them because even though it was not terribly late yet, it was getting dark. We knew we only had a little time before the park closed. I was near Nick and Will. We didn’t know where we were going and could not see the professors, and there was thunder and lightning all around, so we dove for a nearby arched space that turned out to be pretty small, and also leaky, but we packed about seven or eight people into it. It seemed to have benches along the sides, so maybe it was designed for ancient people to take shelter from the rain. Sweet.

I take pictures at terrible times

The rain didn’t slacken and it wasn’t getting any earlier, so we all plunged back out after waiting only a little while. After fording the path to the Villa, we finally made it inside. We had to wade through a courtyard to get to the frescoes, and by then it was too dark to see. Professor C gave her lecture, though, and then we trudged home, soaked but thrilled by the ridiculousness of the day.

We survived. This is the view from our hotel, and that’s the train line below.

I had planned to work on my paper in the evenings at the hotel. Hah!

Day Six:

We visited the Villa Oplontis first, which may have belonged to Nero’s wife. It’s huge and beautiful, with lots of neat mini-gardens.

Next, we went to Herculaneum, which is more out of the way than Pompeii, and also smaller. It’s a lot more manageable, though, and the day was nicer, which also adds to the impression of a place.

You can see the second story preserved here.

Herculaneum was preserved by mudflow rather than descending ash (Pompeii) so the effect is different, and I kind of like Herculaneum better. It’s also less crowded. We saw baths and houses, and wandered around for a short time. I followed our head professor around as he sought out the town center’s political structures, after a brief stop in some really awesome houses.

OMG mosaics

This is where the shore used to be. There were a lot of people trying to escape by boat who got trapped here.

We weren’t in Herculaneum for long, because we had an appointment in Stabiae. We stopped for a “Franco surprise” lunch at a great restaurant where we were informed that we were at the place of the world’s most important pasta. It was pretty good.

Stabiae is where the image of Flora comes from, which is the poster outside my door at the Centro. I bought a poster of it for myself, to redecorate my dorm room (and eventual apartment):

(Removed by Bourbons, now in Naples Museum)

The Bourbons were not especially concerned with preservation, and in fact roughed up the frescoes they did not take, so that no one else could have them either.

Hey! Jerks!

I really liked the two villas we visited at Stabiae (Arianna and San Marco). They gave me further proof that gardens were mostly only for looking at, and they had a sweet view. Here, as with most of the places we saw, the sea used to be closer in.

(Vesuvius view from Stabiae)

Day Seven

The next morning we went to the Villa Regina at Boscoreale, but it was raining again, so I didn’t really take any pictures. The museum was really cool though, and showed all kinds of preserved household items from the villa. Regina was a working villa (like Centro Due) with grain and olive presses or wine presses and stuff like that. I saw one up close and personal in the eerie dark of the Villa of the Mysteries, so I was fine with just looking at the model in the museum.

Capua, too, was a bit of a slog. We went to the museum first, which was thankfully indoors.. Then to the Mithraeum underground. The worship of the eastern god Mithras (who in the 14^th century BC was a Hittite god of trees, and in the 4^th-2^nd centuries, was a sun god) was one of the popular mystery cults for men in the Roman world, especially the military.

They gathered on the benches along the side. The front has Mithras killing the white bull.

From there, we went to the amphitheatre at Capua, but it was so cold and windy and rainy that we mostly just stayed inside the museum to hear about beast-fights and look at the pieces of the amphitheatre that were there, and really cool. We did pause to look at the real amphitheatre, but when you’ve seen one, and it’s freezing… well..

We didn’t even stay there for lunch, but went as a group to Montecassino where we went to a café. Franco called ahead for us, so they were ready. We had an awesomely American-like lunch of pizza, fries, and cappuccino (okay maybe not..) before going to our very last site of the Campania trip.

Montecassino is the site of a really intense battle that happened in WWII, when the Allies had to take the summit, where their enemies were holed up in the monastery on the mountaintop. The bus trip was intense and I can’t imagine trying to scale that thing under friendly circumstances, let alone to take it from an enemy. I guess the Greeks were on to something with their citadel plan. It was freezing, but the monastery is beautiful. I saw photos which showed that the whole thing is a rebuilding because the top of the mountain was basically blown up by the end of things. Still, the church was really lovely, and we happened to be there when the monks were about to sing Vespers. Johnny had been telling me to go check out Montecassino, so I’m really glad it was on our list, because I’m not sure how I would have gotten there otherwise.

Note the snow-capped mountains in the background.

What we visited wasn’t really the war memorial, that was a little further down, because I saw it out the bus window. Nonetheless, it was intense and a little hard to take.

Campania!! Part one

2007-12-11T05:10:00.001-08:00

The Campania trip was awesome.

It was less intense than the Sicily trip in that we didn’t have to move every single night, but only stayed in two different places. The first was called the Villa Vergiliana, but we referred to it as “Centro Due” because it was like the country cousin of our beloved city dwelling in Rome.

Campania is Italian for ‘countryside’ anyway. We were headed south.

Day One: our first stop was not an ancient site. We went to an American military cemetery at Nettuno, where the American soldiers who fought mostly in Sicily were buried.

It was a really beautiful place and put me in mind of the clean new monuments I saw last time I was in Washington DC. There were a lot of elements that all combined and of course plenty of classical references. WWII monuments are always a little hard to take. I liked the gardens best.

From there we moved south along the coast to Terracina. I’d been looking forward to this since my Roman art history teacher showed us plans of the Jupiter sanctuary there, explaining the importance of its cliffs-to-the-sea view. There’s a bar now on top of the hill where there used to be a small temple with a portico. And some fan-freaking-tastic views of the sea.

The whole complex sits on a platform that is reinforced by barrel vaulting and arches underneath.

The town of Terracina/Anxur still has parts of the Appian way, which we walked. This was where I mailed my JET application in a nearby post box. Tragically for the two envelopes, they would be separated in their journey, and one would not see Nashville.

There’s a place further down near the sea where Trajan had part of the cliff-face cut away to give the road some space, so the Appian Way could get between the cliff and the water.

Engineers cleared an estimated 13,600 cubic meters of rock. Pretty intense, if you consider that when we do this, we use a lot more advanced technology, and explosives. They left numbers carved into the rock counting the Roman feet down from where they started.

Our next stop was Sperlonga, where the second emperor Tiberius had a villa. This villa is most notable for the dining grotto that’s built into a natural cave next to the ocean.

This is from inside the grotto where one of the biggest groups of statues would have stood. The people dining would be on the grassy platform visible on the left, while the platform in the middle had another statue. The ocean is behind it all, but the whole grotto is filled with water, for a sweet lighting and sound effect. It’s important because it’s so different from Augustus who lived modestly and in Rome.

Our last stop of the day was Minturnae, but since we were running behind schedule, it was pretty much dark by the time we got there.

noooooo.. come back!

So we couldn’t take as complete a tour of the place. We explored for a little while in the dark, then visited the little museum under the support structure of the theatre, and then moved on to Centro Due, where we had the best dinner ever, and hung about in the salon room before crashing out.

Day two:

First stop, Piscina Mirabilis! Which means roughly ‘amazing pool,’ and it was. Though it looked and felt unsettlingly like the Lord of the Rings ‘Mines of Moria’ setting, this was once a huge cistern that could hold 12,600 cubic meters of water.

Heck yeah

Then we went to Misenum, where the navy used to be, and then to a museum which had some pretty fun stuff (see: statue of Nerva/Domitian on horse), like some statues of Vespasian and Titus in which they have kind of realistic heads but heroically-nude Greek style bodies that just don’t match.

Next we went to Baiae, which was famous in Roman times both for being a place to regain health, and for its crazy debauchery. We explored a large bath complex with various ruins of swimming pools and rooms. Everyone kept saying the Mercury temple was the coolest thing ever, so I was on my way there when I came upon what was in fact the coolest thing ever:

That is not an optical illusion. That is my roommate and myself in a barrel vault where a fig tree is growing upside-down.

I’m not really sure how this happened. I thought this was what everyone had been raving about, but then I found my way into the Mercury dome which was in fact the coolest place ever, acoustically speaking. The dome was filled at the bottom with water, which meant the place had the greatest echo effect. We had a great time snapping, clapping, whistling, stomping, and otherwise creating a disturbance while the whole place reverberated.

We returned to Centro Due for lunch, an amazing lunch of pizza rustica (pizza rolls?), pizza, fruit (much of it from the trees outside, like the eggs we had at breakfast being from the chickens outside), and all kinds of wonderful homemade bread (from the big bread oven outside). I had no idea how close the Villa Vergiliana was to Cumae, but after lunch we were only on the bus for like six minutes before arriving.

Cumae is the location of Vergil’s Cumaen Sibyl. She’s the prophetess who goes into a frenzy and tells Aeneas what to do (Aeneas, eventual founder of Rome, sort of). It’s one of my favorite Vergil passages, where Deiphobea “raves in the cave.” Well, this was her cave, lengendarily speaking.

Dark.

We moved up to the summit, as Aeneas does in the story, to the temple of Apollo (which was not always a temple to Apollo, necessarily. The Greeks were in Cumae from the 8^th century BC, so it was theirs first, rededicated in the time of Augustus to Apollo). I thought we were on top of the hill there, but we were not. We climbed further to the site of the temple to Jupiter, mostly gone. But, from this vantage point we saw such wonderful things as a horse pulling a chariot along the beach, and this:

I mean.. whoa.

We went back to Centro Due from there, and there was an optional field trip to go and see an amphitheatre that was still being excavated. Of course I went to see it. It was basically on Villa Vergiliana property, and they believe that the associated temple to perhaps Mercury (idk how they figure this stuff out, still) is underneath the Centro Due.

You can just see the top of the amphitheatre outer wall in this picture of Centro Due

Day Three:
Day Three was Naples Day. The art history class professor “Tags” joined us to give us a sort of tour of part of the city. He was proud that we weren’t driving to the museum, and then driving directly out of the city. Naples has a bad reputation, but it’s still an important place to see, he said. It was pretty cool. There was a lot to see, and we only saw some of it (churches and some areas underground that were Roman shopping areas). Our Centro-Due bag lunches were so stocked that we were all able to give something non-monetary to the beggars that came by.

We also got to explore some shops that sold really cool and unique Nativity sets, and separate pieces, but I didn’t buy anything because I had no idea how to get something like that home in my already overstuffed suitcase.

We did go to the museum as well. There is a ton of stuff there, and sections are closed arbitrarily on certain days, so I didn’t get to see the Stabiae Flora painting, but we did see some really cool sculpture (including Isis statue from Pompeii sanctuary) and mosaic, and also the ‘secret room’ which has all the erotica material from Pompeii. Since so much of the material is from Pompeii, I felt lucky to have already been there before going to the Naples Museum (we were to go to Pompeii in a couple days).

Ever see that show, Rome?

That night, Emily C and I ate at the professors’ table, and dessert was tiramisu. We had been thoroughly enjoying our stay, between the amazing food downstairs, and the good times to be had in the salon room above. I tried to do my homework, but it was a pretty useless attempt during out stay at Centro Due. I had not managed to write my paper before leaving on the trip, so I had brought my computer with me. Which I used, of course, to other ends as well. And, we watched Scrubs and were all very hyper.

Day Four dawned bright and clear, and we left the Villa Vergiliana (farewell, oh best food ever and fierce shower competition) to head toward Pompeii. We stopped first in Beneventum along the way, where (among other Roman things like an Isis temple, a bridge, and a theatre, Trajan has an arch depicting him as just, capable, and divinely sanctioned:

This is a strategic place on the Appian Way

And we had lunch in a little courtyard before going into the museum, full of the materials that had been collected all over the Beneventum area (once called Maleventum, but changed so it would sound more pleasant). I’m not sure it could have been more pleasant.

This is where we ate lunch. Beneventum is super quaint and super clean.

Thence to Saepinum, a Roman colony. It was still an absolutely goregous day, and we explored Saepinum trying to figure out what was where.

Professor Wally: What’s that at the head of the forum?
Me: (sigh) Basilica…

It was a fun task, hindered somewhat by the hordes of ragazzi who seemed to have a similar assignment. And, a shepherd who happened to be driving his sheep through town (Saepinum is originally from Saepio which means enclosure, or sheepfold, so this has been going on since Roman times).. The town is cool because it’s a Roman colony but a mountain town, or it was until Rome settled the lower area, but still has a different style to it.

That’s my class; I’m always last.

Our hotel was right next to the Circumvesuviana Pompeii train station, called Villa Dei Misteri; we were ready for the Pompeii visit the next day; we were to be there from the opening of the archaeopark at 8:30 until it closed at 5.

Backposting

2007-12-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

(I'm sort of doing this to help review for my final coming up!)

November’s First Week:

First, we visited the Temple of Divine Claudius (it became pretty common to deify emperors, or at least the ones you didn’t hate), or what was left of it. There’s not much. This is pretty close to the Colosseum, and it was a lovely day.

Foundations only

And there is even less left of the Temple of Peace, unfortunately.. so next we were lunching by the Arch of Titus, which is pretty awesome and well preserved. We fed the pigeons which became a horrifying spectacle. We saw that a lot of tourist groups stopped by the arch, but mostly they were getting information about the forum. Vinnie was helpful to some English speakers, pointing out some details. The arch is cool because it has Titus flying to heaven on an eagle’s back in the top of it. On the insides there are triumph scenes. This one is from the sacking of the Jerusalem Temple.

Titus and his father Vespasian took the Temple and had the triumph in 71AD

Our next stop was our official visit to the Circus Maximus (this time not filled with glowing balls, but instead with a woman whose dog was endlessly chasing a red ball and simultaneously making it roll).

Oldest sports arena. Ever.

After a brief race (no) we were off to the Montemartini museum, which is a converted power plant, so kind of interesting in its own right, having ancient sculpture alongside old generators.

Fortuna-On-This-Very-Day has Brookie by the leg!

I really liked this muse sculpture. She might have been placed with eight others in a garden or something

It was a long and tiring day! Happily, soon after that the leaves were falling golden in the courtyard.

I love it!

Our next field trip on Thursday also stayed within Rome. Our first stop was the often seen but not yet entered Colosseum, which I gratuitously overphotographed, but which was admittedly very, very cool. Some guys dressed as gladiators outside made a face at one of my friends, so she made a face back. He then apparently roared “King of KIIING!” at her as we hurried away. (This may be important later)

It doesn’t really look real, almost.

We proceeded next to the nearby Ludus Magnus, which is basically gladiator combat school. I loved it. I busted out some moves of my own.

I love this picture. That’s my roommate with a piece of wood she is about to use as a sword. And that’s the Colosseum behind her.

I fought a pokewar with Nick and I won, and would have loved to stay in combat school for longer, but we moved on to Domitian’s palace. It’s huge, even bigger than Augustus’s house and surrounding temples combined. He was the least well-loved of the Flavians and was actually the only emperor to suffer a true damnatio memoriae. Which means Nerva’s (small and pointy) face often appears on Domitian’s (big and wide) head to hilarious effect.

Oh man.

Anyway, we weren’t there very long before we were off to the house museum, which was cool but confusing since there were lots of layers of time in there. My favorite part was a room painted with scenes of Persephone. And, the museum in the back which reminded me of the game Myst because it was so modern and ancient all at once, and some of it was interactive (a tile set up so you could turn it). No photos allowed, though.

It was an easy week to make up for the fact that the one before had been a killer! And, we were preparing to go to Campania the following week… I tried to be a good kid and write my paper that weekend, to no avail.

Campania adventures to come. (Nov 10-16)

A Triumph of Elegance

2007-12-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Today was Centro prom. Arranged by Hanner (my roommate) and Nicholas, this was essentially to be the day we all dressed up fancy to go to the forum for our last forum field trip. So, we did.

It was really a lot of fun. We took tons of pictures (yeah, they will be up on here soon.. I'm still not prepared to dedicate that amount of time yet) and made fun. Photos under the Arch of Septimius Severus. You know. That kind of thing.

In addition to the forum, we went to several churches of the most ancient variety. The one that was first begun by Constantine (Lateran), and Santa Maria Maggiore (I had been to both on an art history trip, but this was cool as well), and San Clemente, and Santa Pudenziana.

We walked to the Laeran from the forum, and had a lunch break there. I was eating lunch on a bench in front of the Lateran lawn for the second time in my life with Captain Cook (my date to Centro prom; we have an overabundance of females). There were a lot of people in uniform outside when we arrived, but they were getting onto buses and leaving. We figured some kind of parade had ended. There were some guys in uniform hanging around in front of the church, but whatever.

Then, a fire truck came wailing down the road and pulled into the piazza area between the lawn and the church. We were perplexed, thinking they were just turning around, but then they parked just next to us and started getting out. We thought maybe something was wrong. A fire in the church? Was someone hurt? What was up with the guys in big headphones and orange suits?

They made us move off the bench by the lawn. We went a bit back, to the steps of the church, and then the helicopter appeared. "Yeeaaah." It circled twice and then landed. I took video with my camera. There's an interesting moment when the blast of wind hit me and I was unable to control the camera, too worried simultaneously about my skirt flying up, and the unexpected amount of dust just then hitting the back of my throat through my agape mouth. I screamed, which of course helped (hah). I managed to regain composure and get the rest of the video.

We took pictures of (and then, with) the helicopter. Later, we found out that it was St. Barbara's day today, and she's the patron of the firemen. So they brought her all their transportation means to show.

Extraordinary. It made the day for most of us.

As an added bonus, after a tiring day walking around in "unsafe shoes" (we are always warned to wear safe shoes on field trips by our weekly schedule) I went to "Fitbox" with Biz, Jackie, Meggers, and Carla. It was exhilarating. The instructor doesn't speak English, but she is able to lead us anyway (along with her normal Italian students). It was hardcore, too. I was so beat, but really thrilled at the end. It reminded me a bit of a lady in a yellow leotard, and working out with Katelyn. I'll be sore tomorrow. But hell, hooray for endorphins. We had a fabulous dinner of burgers and fries (after the first course of spaghetti of course) and chocolate mousse panna cotta whatever it was amazingness for dessert for Carla's birthday. I ate so much I felt a little sick. But, in a good way I guess.

Today was a triumph of elegance, just as my prom invitation said.

The End is Near

2007-11-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

I might have mentioned that it's almost December. As I face that fact and make my list of things to do this weekend and wonder whether to go on the art history field trip (more churches!) in spite of the massive transportation strike planned for tomorrow (I will probably go.. how many times in your life do you get the option to walk across Rome to hear Tags lecture at you?), and as I watch my friends take the links off their ever-shortening paper chains, I know that the end is at hand.

And I know it's kind of melodramatic, to phrase it that way, but I'm facing it pretty calmly. So far. It's the last set of readings before the last Monday lecture. It's the last week of ceaseless trips. It isn't that we're any less tourists than the people we see whenever we're in front of the Pantheon. It's more like we've become supertourists. We've seen more and probed much more intently at the ancient sites than your average tourists. We know where we're going and what bus will get us there fastest (or not, in the case of the pan-Italia seriously no kidding airplanes and everything else included).

We aren't your average tourists. But we're not native ragazzi either.

My to-do list is absolutely massive. Several of the items have a lot to do with getting my blog back up to speed and repopulated with the photos it deserves. Others are the assigned readings. And things like Greek, and homemade cards.

Usually by the time the semester is ending, I'm pretty burned out. I'm excited to pack up and get back to Georgia because I know I'll be back to school in a few short weeks to tackle it all again. But there's something more to lose here. It isn't that I won't come back to Rome ever again. I'm certainly intending to return. And it isn't that I'll never see my Centro friends again. We'll visit one another, at least the ones we want to see the most. In a lot of ways it's like GHP, except that I can't expect to go and work here in a few years. What I stand to lose is the combination of it all.

The huge Pamphili park up the street. Being a parking lot away from gelato. Maria who calls me a snail, and knocking on the doors in the hallway of this redone convent. Staying up too late playing Scrabble, wondering if we'll get special permission to climb Trajan's column tomorrow. Making classics jokes that everyone gets.

Roma aeterna will always be here. When I get to Nashville, I'll have my friends back (or at least some of them), and I can still see Carla and Derek. And I can always visit Emily, Kirsten, and Vinnie in Boston and Emily in Baltimore, and anyone else. But I won't always have them all at the same time, here. It's precious to us because it is limited. By now, very limited. A lot of people really are ready to get out of here. Some people have said very often how much they longed to go. They miss too much that is in the U.S. I know I am too, ready for a break that is. It's good to go away, especially to something like this. It's good to come home too. It's just that for the first time in my college career, I wish the semester had a few more weeks than it does. Not because I need more time to prepare, but just want more time to love it here.

Still Fall in Rome

2007-11-28T05:30:00.000-08:00

Today we went to Monte Testaccio and the Vatican Museums. Overall, a very good half-day field trip. Monte Testaccio is a huge pile of busted amphorae which were mostly used to get olive oil from Spain to Rome. We climbed it briefly and the paths were paved with pottery fragments. I was skeptical about our ability to get into the Vatican on time, but when we got there, the line was jaw-droppingly nonexistant, so we walked right in and got our tickets. There’s way too much amazingness in that place. The concentrated nature of it all seems like the universe might implode into that spot.

We saw the real Prima Porta Augustus, and some famous statues of other emperors and gods, and emperors as gods, and the Cancellaria reliefs, and the reliefs from the Haterii tomb, all of which I studied last year so I was particularly excited. We also saw the awesome and famous Laocoön. Then we were free to roam the place for a couple of hours, so I followed some other people who had been there before (I, though having lived in Rome for three months, had been to the Vatican area only once, to send mail, and had never entered the basilica or the museum, which is a shameful thing to admit) and we fought the crowds to look at the Sistine Chapel, which is just freaking breathtaking, and the Raffaelo room which has the real School of Athens on the wall, and some other really famous painted rooms that even people who don’t know anything about art like me have heard of.

I stuck with Liz because she had gone to these places for class with the exceptionally intense Art History teacher, “Tags,” who lectures nonstop and totally from memory at the sites. She explained the ceiling work of the Sistine Chapel and how the place would have worked. It’s really cool to me how much the works of art are influenced by where they are placed and what the space is used for. School of Athens is supposed to inspire people to look in the bookshelves for knowledge. The Sistine Chapel was divided between laypeople who took Communion beneath a painting of the Fall of Man, and the clergy who got to sit under paintings of a time before original sin.

It was a gorgeous day, so all of this was great. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful too. We went out to Tivoli, to Hadrian’s pleasure villa, which is ridiculously large, and was amazing to explore in the warm late-November sunshine. We followed that up with a visit to a pair of temples on top of a hill, and then to the Villa D’Este, which has sweet wall paintings but even sweeter gardens with amazing fountains. The idea is that Hadrian’s Villa would have had water features like the Villa D’Este, and there were fountains everywhere. In the hallways of the villa itself all along this one wall, and all over the garden. It was like a look-but-don’t-swim water park. I took lots of pictures, but we spent a good two hours roaming the gardens looking at the various fountain features. It was stunning beautiful, and I thought it would be the best thing ever to be invited to a garden party at a place like that. I could just see knots of people chatting in the alcoves, and the couples making out in the fountained corners.

It’s almost December, but it’s still fall in Rome, and I love it!

Lupercal Cave

2007-11-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

This has been in the news recently, because they've just published photos from inside the cave where they sent a camera-probe.

And the consensus is.. they've found the freaking Lupercal Cave!

That link has some photos from inside the cave, showing its mosaics and marble and stonework inside. What's significant about the cave is not that it was actually the place where the she-wolf saved the twins Romy and Remy, but that the Romans kept it as a shrine, believing that it was. And, that Augustus, master of propaganda, built his home right next to it. The finding of the cave is awesome and huge, and I'm excited to see how the excavation turns out.

It doesn't prove that the myth is true (as the article seems to suggest) but it does give us a lot more information about Roman civilization!

Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is not an Italian holiday, but yesterday was quite wonderful. We did have class, but it was an easy day. I didn't even bring my notebook, since we didn't have lectures on site, just some staring. We went to the Ara Pacis first, since it was closed the first time, and stared at it in awe for a while. It was pretty awesome. In the basement part of the building I dropped my camera and two museum people came running. I guess they thought I busted a statue or something.

I may add photos later. But the Ara Pacis is definitely amazing. I spent a lot of time studying it for my class last year, but there's nothing quite like being next to it, picking out the lizards and frogs carved into the relief on the bottom half of the outer wall.

After that, we went to another museum. This was the EUR Museum of Romanness.. or something like that. It was full of only copies of things, so I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be really awesome. Tons of models and plaster casts. Every inch of Trajan's column (which we climbed!) in relief down a long hallway. Lots of models of the city, certain buildings, areas in different places. All very cool. Schematics for how things worked. Roman armies. Roman games. Sweet. I looove scale models.

The day was bright and not even that cold, which makes things easier as well. I had a lovely time. Dinner was absolutely awesome. The cooking ladies went all-out for a holiday that isn't even theirs; we had two huge birds, after the first course of ravioli of course.. pumpkin soup, green beans, mashed potatoes, nuts and stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn... It was wonderful! Dessert was also fabulous, as you can imagine. There were about eighteen and I tried them all. The cheesecake was like.. whipped cheesecake. The pumpkin pie made my Prof. Wally's wife was freakin' awesome and I'm getting the recipe.

This morning, like any good conscientious American, it was shopping day. I went on the art history field trip again, and got to see some more realyl cool churches, as well as the Doria Pamphili Galleria (or some of it, anyway).. got some more stuff to decorate my room (I'm shifting from anime to classical art.. it's a totally fair trade).

From there, Captain Cook and I went off to shop. We looked in some clothes stores (which were, thankfully, not packed with any more Italians than usual) and they were all pricey, but then we got lost when we used a different exit from the mall onto a different street. We walked along it for a while, then came to a sign with arrows pointing to different attractions. We hadn't bought anything yet, and I read off the attractions, one of which was "Museo paste alimentari" or something, and I laughingly suggested we go find the pasta museum. We set off in that direction and stumbled upon some great little stores. Once I found an item that was my sucker price, some kind of dam broke and I bought Christmas presents for a whole bunch of people. After throwing down tens of euro, Emily and I cheerfully picked our way back to the Corso and got a bus home. This whole excursion took about three hours (the field trip was like 9 to 1:30, and then we were out until about 5) but was well worth it. It was even warmer today than yesterday, with no need even for a jacket, only a sweater!

It's been absolutely lovely!

A Full-Time Job

2007-11-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

So I’m going to have to go way back. I guess one good indication of my not writing is the old adage that no news is good news. I've been too busy living it to write it down! Let’s start with the end of October.

Before that, we’d gone through the Aqua Claudia aquaduct, though. THAT was really cool.

Yeah, in an aquaduct, no big deal.

Our field trips at that time were mostly within the city of Rome, so we saw things like the Theater of Marcellus and the nearby Temple of Apollo and Portico of Octavia.. stuff we see every day on the bus, you know? And then we went into the Forum of Augustus.

This was cool because it meant we got to go somewhere special that regular tourists do not have access. This will be a theme. The Forum of Augustus, like most of the fora, is today cut up by the “Road of the Imperial Fora” which Moussolini set up back in the day. It was awesome nonetheless to be in the place I’d read so much about. We were also let into Caesar’s Forum before that.

Just hanging out in Caesar's forum

We also visited Augustus’ home on the Palatine (it was Augustus week) which was freaking awesome. We were taken down in small groups to see the excavated area, right next to the Romulus Hut which may not have actually contained Romulus, but which the Romans kept up as if it had. There was another temple to Apollo nearby, in which the terracotta plaques used to be. I used this plaque in a paper I wrote for Latin class, so I was way excited to see it in person.

It's Apollo and Hercules fighting over Apollo's tripod. But we know who will win. And guess who they symbolize!! Augustus = Apollo, and Hercules = Antony!

After that (still on the 30^th of October) we went to the Palazzo Massimo Museum which is right next to Termini train station. I had already been there with the Emilys to look it over and prepare for my presentation on the Fasti (Roman calendars),

Genuinely excited.

so after giving my presentation (which was fine, although at the end of the day, so I don’t blame Vinny for falling asleep) and seeing Emily G’s, we cruised around once and went home. The museum has a full reconstruction of Livia’s wall-painted dining room, though. Sweet. And a mummy child in the basement. And some original bronzes from Greece, and some awesome sculptures. Including PIOUS AUGUSTUS, on which Emily gave her presentation.

At the feet of the master

The next week, we went to see the Ara Pacis and Mausoleum of Augustus in the rain. The Ara was closed and the Mausoleum is kind of decrepit by now. But it was a short day.

We went to Ostia on November first and we saw a lot of stuff. It was cold and rainy, though, so mostly what I remember is that I wore boots (excellent protection from water but not comfortable for trekking across a whole ancient city, which we pretty much did) but not a proper coat, so I was cold the whole time.

This is how we have class in Ostia

But, there was an underground tunnel in the baths, and we discovered bats inside it. That was really sweet. We followed the sounds of bats until we found a whole bunch of them, the disturbed them with camera flashes and flashlight beams until they swooped around us. One narrowly missed my head. I could only think “I wish I had Achilles with me.” Achilles was the name of my MagLite this summer.

Bats! Bats bats bats! Bats bats bats! Bats bats baaaats...

We did see a lot of cool stuff, and Ostia is an awesome place to visit. It’s a nice one-stop site for everything from forum to temples to vigiles, sort of like Pompeii except that it lasted longer, and a lot closer to Rome. In the baths near the forum I accidentally said something that could be wrongly interpreted, and Vinny actually sprinted away from me laughing, to prevent me from explaining myself. I also got really excited when I found wall tubulae.

TUBULAE!!!

The teachers were feeling it too, by the end. We got to the “Round Temple” and Prof C said “Three things to remember about the Round Temple. It’s a temple. It’s round. It was the last major public work built in Ostia.” I don’t think we’ll ever forget. Then, we got to go home.

Friday immediately following this (that week we had two all-day field trips, of which Ostia was the second, Thursday.. we always have them on Tuesday) I hadn’t had enough field-tripping for one week, so I went along on the art history field trip to some churches. We went to St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, and also St. Nicholas in Chains, where they have the Moses carved by Michelangelo.

Moses.

All of the churches were amazing and impressive and just awe-inspiring. I love looking at the marblework for some reason, I just think it’s so pretty. I had lunch with Captain Cook outside of the Lateran (which is the head of the churches in Rome, we found out) and it was a lovely day.

And, since that obviously wasn’t enough yet, I joined up for the optional Saturday morning field trip to the Horologium of Augustus. The gnomon of this sundial is a big obelisk that now stands in a public square (my dad and I found it at night while they were here), but the actual ground part which charts the passing shadow is all underground. So we went into the basement of some shop that had some Greek writing down under the floor under a few inches of water. Yeeeaah. It was really, really awesome.

This is the line between Virgo and Taurus

Total hours spent on field trips that week: 32. Yeah, buddy; add that to the hours spent in class and doing homework and don’t ask me how I got sick shortly thereafter. G-Unit had a cold. There are only a couple of ways for me to get sick: short myself on sleep, spend copious amounts of time with someone who is sick, or stress out and try to do way too much stuff in a small amount of time. I did all three.

Gone missing

2007-11-21T06:48:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything! I have an Italian quiz this evening. I'll be sure to post after that, since I'll have more time. Campania was amazing! I have lots to tell since I last wrote.

Happy Birthday!

2007-11-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Since my birthday fell within the bounds of “hell week” it was relatively low-key and unassuming. Everyone is presented with cake, though, on their birthday or on the nearest weekday. Angela has called me a snail, because I am always the last to finish eating. I’m used to being last, though. On the 29^th, Franco was sort of hovering waiting to take my plate away so they could bring in the cake. I was aware of this and still the following was allowed to occur.

When I was finally done, I still had a piece of bread sitting on the table about the size of two bites. Carla tried to toss it into the bowl that was moving away from me at that moment, but I screamed “NO!” at her and snatched it from her hand quite greedily. It was only two bites. I could finish it. I still had the last of the green beans in my mouth at this point. I looked around fiendishly and then partly just for laughs, I shoved the rest of the bread into my mouth. The lights immediately turned off and I began to crack up laughing because they were bringing in the lit cake.

The Centro sang “happy birthday” and I was falling apart the whole time, my mouth too full to speak, but too busy laughing to chew. I knew I was running out of time and would soon be expected to extinguish the candles. I waved them out with my hands, still laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

All in all, it made my day.

Halloween was fun. I didn’t have as much time to spend on my costume as some people who looked amazing, but I did put together a quick rendition of Iris, the rainbow goddess who does Juno’s bidding. The party on the fourth floor became a dance party and I went completely wild there, too, singing and dancing my heart out until I went downstairs and promptly fell asleep.

Left to right: Zombie, Iris, Diana, Love-a-lot bear, Minerva, a Spartan, a Gaul

Between that and the thirty-odd hours of field trip each week, I’ve worn myself out enough that I caught Emily G’s cold (Emily C got it too) so we’re all sicky-faced Emilys together today.

Otherwise the weather has been alternating between beautifully sunny and cool, and chilly-wet cloudy. We have no field trip today, which is a good thing, because I think it will help me to not fall behind so much because I go at a much slower pace with a cold.

Not to mention the fact that I have to sign up for classes for next semester. Which means I have to figure out what I’m doing after next semester since some of my classes depend on my plans.

I’ve been using my “spare” time to try to gather information and make those plans. I have been quite content knowing I had ‘options,’ but now I guess I have to have more than that. Had to happen sometime.

Fall Break, AKA "Fliff Week"

2007-10-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

*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

2007-10-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

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!

Going to Florence? Maybe.. yeah okay why not

2007-09-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

On our field trip on Tuesday, Emily tried to point out the ridiculousness that is inherently part of the program here.

“You guys. We’re sitting next to an ancient temple, eating lunch of hollow bread while we look over the most beautiful view of the seacoast.. and tell pirate jokes.”

We were at the hilltop site of Cosa, a word which happily enough means “what?” in Italian, leading into a great many “who’s on first” type jokes if you ever tell an Italian that is where you plan to go. Cosa was a colony of Rome which was eventually ended when it was sacked by pirates.

But how did the pirates scale the wall? I asked this question in earnest but the others thought I was setting up my next joke.

The Cosa trip was fabulous, not least because I got to swim in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time after we were done exploring the hilltop.

The rest of the week was brutal, if by brutal I mean we went on field trips every day. This is only brutal in the capacity that you do a lot of walking and looking and have less time than usual to complete the little things we do on the side like Latin or Greek, or Italian for that matter. At the same time, projects are starting to pop up here and there, so extra work is coming along the way all the while.

Simultaneous to this is “free museum weekend” in Florence, this weekend in fact. A large group has already left on the EuroStar train for Florence. Why, you may wonder, did I not go with them? Because I’m a stubborn girl who doesn’t like to make decisions, mostly.

I have become convinced that no train in Italy really requires booking in advance. And hostels either. We’ll see how this works out. I’ll be flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak. Taking the slow train because I want to be difficult—I mean, different, plus I’m cheap and willing to spend an extra hour or so looking at scenery to save like twenty euro.

Hope today’s bus strike is over early tomorrow morning! How else will I get to Termini station?

Happy Birthday Augustus

2007-09-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Kirsten just woke me up and saved my afternoon from a Nap of Death. I was getting sleepy doing the reading for class so I thought I had earned a little nap. Usually I don’t even need an alarm to sleep almost exactly forty minutes which is a primo napping time. Unfortunately, there are times when you slip into groggy half-dream infested states of confusion, and you wake up hours later, disoriented, grouchy, confused, and still sleepy. This is the Nap of Death to which I admittedly fell a little bit victim this afternoon.

Good naps make you feel refreshed, but Naps of Death do no such thing.

So I thought instead of trying to jump right into Italian homework, I should perhaps warm up my logy brain with an exercise in writing!

It’s Sunday again. This time, the corner closest to where I live has been roped off from cars and kids are playing there on bikes, and people are selling organic honey. It is less noisy than last week, hence the nap.

Our Tuesday field trip was to Lavinium, where we trekked across a farmer’s field to take a look at a hero shrine of Aeneas and thirteen altars all set up next to each other at different times in history. It started raining while we were there, and got pretty chilly. In my infinite wisdom I had packed an umbrella at the last minute and so was somewhat shielded, although the wind was pretty fierce (or so I thought. I hadn’t seen anything yet when it comes to wind).

Heroon: Hero shrine

Thirteen altars all in a row

Then we went to the Museum of Ships at Nemi, which has inspired a new life plan (live at Nemi; step one: learn to speak Italian…). The mountain town around the lake is almost as beautiful as the lake itself.

Outside ship museum

It’s called the Museum of Ships because it houses reconstructions and materials from the ancient pleasure boats (omg, cruise!) sailed by Nero and Caligula and the like. It also has material from a nearby grove sacred to Diana.

Ship stuff

Nemi was gorgeous, but unfortunately also home to some bees that are haters. Some time during lunch, one of them stung Professor Collantoni and she had to be whisked off to the hospital by a man in a black sedan (because there were no ambulances available?). She is, apparently, allergic. But I figure anyone would hate life a little bit if they got stung in the face. I learned that Professor Roman (yeah that is his real name) is allergic as well and carries an epipen, so I know who to sprint to in case of stinging mishap.

Lunch!

After this, we went on to Tusculum, another hilltop. This is the place where Cicero had his favorite villa. We endured a lecture in super-force winds, taking notes to the best of our abilities, then were set free to explore the area. The ruins were pretty neat, but we were all much more impressed by the windy hilltop area itself. We climbed around and explored. I formed a team with Mike and Genvieve, and together we found the summit and some caves.

Me on the summit, striking a pose.

I was pretty tired on Wednesday because I’d been a little bit sick Tuesday night (indigestion? I guess..) and it kept me awake more than I would have wanted. We were supposed to have no field trip Wednesday, but Franco found out that the Forum workers (we were scheduled to visit Thursday) were planning a strike Thursday, so we moved the visit to Wednesday morning. But then Franco found out they were also striking Wednesday morning too. Not to be outdone, we switched our morning and afternoon schedules (Greek and Latin morning this time.. Forum in the afternoon) and moved off for the Forum Romanum around 2:30.

We got to see the mysterious Lapis Niger, a black rock that the Romans avoided stepping on out of respect even though they didn’t know why, or what was underneath it. There is apparently some kind of altar down there, and an inscribed thingy that says not to walk on it. After that we looked at the Comitium (the Lapis Niger is kind of inside the Comitium) where the Romans used to have assemblies and vote on things, and then speculated about the location of the Tarpeian rock (whence they threw criminals condemned to die).

Don't step on the black rock or you'll be cursed!

Then, as is policy, we were turned loose and told to explore the forum and get a better grasp of its layout, so Genvieve, Derek, and I wandered around for a while until we found ourselves off the ancient-guidebook map and near the Coliseum. We grabbed a bus home.

After this, I had almost no class to speak of on Thursday, save Italian (and the quiz that comes with it), which went fine. Thursday night, I decided to try finding karaoke in the city of Rome, which is no easy task. Once again accompanied by Genvieve and Ashley, we found Pub Julius Caesar pretty easily. It was too early for it to be full of people at that time, and we discovered that they sadly did not have karoke.

We set off for Pirati, but actually walked right past it when we got off the bus because it was closed. Getting home was difficult and took a long time. I enjoyed it in the terms of “we’re having an adventure” but “we found karaoke” it was not. Because I had been so hoping to, I started us up singing Journey on the bus home. One of the buses home, that is.. the third one of the night.

Friday there was a Wine Symposium in the centro where a certified wine expert came to teach us how to drink wine correctly. Friday night I spent doing my hand-laundry I thought I was going to do last week. It takes a long time to wash things that way.

Wine Symposium advice

I’ve been exploring the nearby park a little at a time, but I’ve decided it should get its own entire entry. It is that large and that cool.

Last night I hung out with Emily G (one of the centro’s many Emilys). We went into Rome to buy supplies for a mission of ours. Then we went on a postcard hunt which yielded no results, but did yield a delightful restaurant entirely by accident off to one side of the Coliseum (Collosseum?).

I got back and was fairly tired and the plan was to go to bed around 12, when I heard some people in the garden singing happy birthday to Brooke. I was going to just go down and tell her happy birthday, and then go to bed, but she encouraged me to go with them to a club to celebrate her birthday. I considered the fact that my only night-out experience that weekend had been getting lost in the middle of nowhere off-the-map section of town finding Pirati, so I consented. We got as far as the club itself and stood in line for a little while before a group of three of us (Chris, Genvieve, and I) all decided we didn’t want to wait in line anymore, it was 1:50am, and we would rather be in bed than waiting to pay a cover charge for what looked like a really crowded place.

Plus, I wanted to go to the “gypsy market” Sunday morning. Now that it looked like that wasn’t happening, I still preferred to leave.

I did manage to get to the gypsy market this morning, and it was a very intense experience. Some things are so out there. Some are priced really well, too. Still, that place, like every crowded bus I’ve been on, like la Notte Bianca’s crowded streets reminded me again and again of a line from a song.

It’s called SpeedStick. It’s not expensive. I kept saying it to the two Emilys that joined me in the trip to the market. They concur. But it seems that anywhere that large crowds converge, there will always be just too little deodorant to go around.

I should now be doing my homework or even doing something about my individual site report/research paper stuff.. I spent more time this weekend planning a trip to Vienna

Late Sunday Afternoon

2007-09-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

It’s Sunday afternoon and there’s a happy bustle going on in the courtyard garden below my window. The nuns are having a party, so we aren’t supposed to go in there right now. Last night we had our own party, since we have to find our own food on weekends, more than half the students pitched in and we had a garden bbq. It was pretty fun. We even had a ‘dance party’ after we ate.

Part of what I am enjoying most here is getting to know the little things. Today I’m going to hand wash some of my laundry. I’ve never done that before, to any extent. But apparently, Italian washing machines are beasts and cannot be trusted with clothing of any delicacy whatsoever. And I haven’t used the dryer because I’m a cheapskate and it costs like 1.50 euro to do so. Please. There are thousands of drying racks on the terrace. I’ll manage.. and I did. My socks required about sixty clothespins (again, I exaggerate). But hey, it’s Rome, and there’s something cool about taking the time to do things like that with your own hands.

I like that I’m starting to know what buses to take where, and how to get back again. I even set out on my own to track down Harry Potter 6 yesterday and not only found a bookstore in a sort of mall thing, but went to the information desk and asked “Where is the books in English?” in Italian! Yeah, not grammatically correct, but totally got my point across. So she pointed a direction and said a bunch of stuff in Italian I didn’t understand and I thanked her and just wandered in the right direction.

The European covers are awesome.

On this same trip I ordered a gelato cone with such success (and even whined that they didn’t have ciocollato.. yeah chocolate..) that the guy behind the counter spoke to me in all Italian (so I have no idea what he said, except that he offered me nutella gelato instead, which I had and it was delicious).. and I know most gelato counter guys speak English.. and this place was right next to the Trevi fountain, home of tourists apparently 24/7.

It's like this even at night.

Speaking of Nutella? They are absolutely obsessed. There are individual packets of it at breakfast which the students sometimes horde. Every bar (what we call a bar in the US is what they call a pub.. a bar is actually just any place that serves food, pastries, drinks (especially coffee), gelato, etc) has an enormous canister of it with a pump on top for mass-topping. Everywhere you go there is hazelnut this and chocolate-hazelnut that. It’s lovely.

Nectar. Of. The. Gods.

I really thought my friends were kidding when they said I would get hit on by random strangers, but this too has occurred. Three times now, I’ve been complimented, mostly on the basis of my extremely pale skin, I think. Yesterday when I was on my way into the park, the guy on the black scooter was like “I like white skinned girls.” He asked if I wanted to get a ride to wherever I was going on his scooter. No thanks! Just out for a stroll.. It happens more often when alone than when in groups.

Ciao.

Italy happens to sell a particular kind of cracker I had been looking for since my trip to Spain with Dean. It is apparently a British product, the digestive cracker. These things are freakin’ delicious. I might have to stock up and declare forty pounds of them on my way home. Coffee is extremely strong, and wine is extremely cheap, since a lot of it is so local. Some of the students have been having fun buying stuff like Cerveteri wine, since we passed vineyards in the bus on the way home from there.

Pizza is sold by weight and is pretty much both ubiquitous (though not as much as gelato!) and delicious everywhere. Italians love exact change and get cross when you try to pay them with a ten. Or a twenty. They stammer and stare if you hand over a fifty.

The only time I’ve seen a one or two cent piece euro was because I found them on the ground. Most things cost an even ten cent ending. And sales tax is always just included.. if it’s charged at all, I’m not really sure.

Italians all have dogs which they all love very much and take off the leash regularly. But since there are so many and they all do it, it seems like all the dogs are really well socialized and they don’t fight with other dogs or run off too far, or wander up to strangers. The only problem this causes at all is an abundance of dog crap in the park, so you have to watch your step.

I think the nuns got a live singer. They are really rockin’ it out there. There are nuns and monks around, too, you just see them hanging out in their full attire, on the bus and all over town. All kinds of nationalities, too.. I’ve seen Asian nuns and pale nuns as well as the possibly-Italian nuns. This city is kind of a big deal when it comes to Catholicism though.

Saints, especially Mary, are everywhere. And there are literally shrines to Mary in the sides of walls just along the street here and there. And like nine hundred or so churches in Rome. I went to church this morning, since one of the other students found an English mass. But of course the church is beautiful and every inch of the inside is painted, and apparently the remains of Saint Susanna are beneath the church. I’ve never been to a service in a church with that kind of history!

I think I want to go use the last few hours of daylight to walk around and stretch out my legs. They are legitimately pissed off that I spent so little of yesterday NOT forcing them into labor, but I figure if I go for a walk, maybe they won’t ache so much.

I’m kind of sleepy because I never go to bed as early as I hope to, and often wake up earlier than I would at home because the city really shuts down at noon on Sundays, if.. a place opens at all. Today it was to go to church, but even just in general. There is also a Sunday morning flea market which I want to attend next week. Bargaining is lots of fun.

I’ve begun the city-wide search for the best postcards for the cheapest price. When the search concludes.. you will know. You might have to leave a “comment” with your address though. I didn’t take my address box.

Week One: Tomb Raiding

2007-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, being our main field trip day, brought the usual amazement and excitement to the week. Starting bright and early, all the centristi (centro students) piled on our big bus with which we rule the streets of Rome, filled as it is with scooters and tiny smartcars.

Our first stop was a museum in Tarquinia, at which we could sadly not take photos. It was filled with ancient Etruscan stuff, the Etruscans being the people who lived near Rome and in Tuscany back in the 700s-300s BC or so. There were just.. sarcophagi sitting around arranged in the rooms, with no glass or anything to keep you off of them, just trust. This is an example of one which is actually in the museum but we couldn’t see him because he was closed for restoration:

Laris Pulena: The very picture of a 'fat and happy' Etruscan.

We also saw a lot of early burial stuff, like biconical urns for ashes (some of them had helmets at the top part of the urn) or hut shaped urns, as homes for the dead. I had seen photos of them before, but what struck me was how large they were. You can’t really tell with just a photo in a classroom that the hut urn is about a foot wide.

okay so this is a drawing, but you get the idea.

We didn’t really have a lot of time in the museum, because you really could spend many hours there. We had about one. I got to see lots of terracotta sculptures and stuff carved out of stone, and some cool other stuff like a reconstruction of a tomb with painted walls.

But wait.. our next stop was the location of the real thing! The painted tombs were all behind glass sealed doors so you could see in, but the climate wouldn’t affect the ancient paintings and cause them to deteriorate. For that reason, I don’t really have photos of that either. But the countryside around the hill where this was is amazing:

Danger. Do not go down hill. Bees.

Also, these stone basin things were what used to contain the ash urns.

stone mushrooms

After our terribly British narrator gave us the tour of the painted tombs and lunch, we were off to Banditaccia, the necropolis of Old Caere (Cerveteri). This was extremely cool. The city of the dead was completely open to our access, meaning we could climb on it and into the tombs themselves.

They're even decorated with stripes.

The giant mounds are called tumuli, and there are family “homes” carved into the very rock underneath. Often there are several rooms in one ‘home’ and can even been several ‘homes’ in one earth mound, presumably extended family members in the same hill. Other tombs were just cut separately square into the hillside like “condos” our professor said. All in all, it felt very adventurous to be scurrying up and down the paths in the sprawling city filled with chambers cut right from the rock. We were divided into groups, so here’s me with mine inside one of the tombs:

We, raiders of tombs

Our bus stopped at the beach so we could relax for a few before heading back to the centro.

Black volcanic sand.

With barely a breather of one day in between (used for reading, Greek, Latin, and Italian for us centristi).. we were off again this morning headed for Veii, one of the closest Etruscan towns to Rome and Rome’s earliest enemy. There are the ruins of an old temple to Minerva (or maybe Apollo) there, from which come some really famous terra cotta statues of Apollo, Hercules, and a female usually thought to be Latona (Apollo’s mom). The temple foundations remain and have poles set up on them to show where the rest of the structure went. There is a ritual pool next to the temple. We were allowed to basically roam around here too.

Foundations only.

The reason being, all the goods from all the places like Ceveteri and the temple had been moved off to museums all over the place, and our next stop was the Villa Giulia, which houses a good many of them. No photos, again, except in the courtyard, but rows upon rows of Greek vases (imports from back in the day), bronze work, pieces of temples, and of course the lovely terra cottas from Veii. This is what the Apollo looks like:

I wish internet photos were prettier.

He is similar in style to the famous couple sarcophagus which was also in the museum:

Etruscans.

The museum also had the three gold tablets from Pyrgi which have inscriptions in Phonecian and in Etruscan. No one can reeallly read Etruscan, so these tablets are kind of a big deal in the language department. I thought, once again based on photos in class back at Vandy that I’d seen, that they were huge. They’re actually like eight inches tall each, maybe. I have photos of these, but they are saved in the wrong format (from class last year).

After that, we went to see a piece of one of Rome’s oldest walls, called the “Servian” wall after one of the kings of Rome (pre-Republic, and pre-empire) from around 600BC (so it’s claimed, but the materials are more like 400 BC).

Yeah ancient walls made of tufa blocks.

So far.. that’s all. But it’s all so, so cool!

The White Night

2007-09-09T09:08:00.001-07:00

Since my obelisk hunt, I’d been hanging around the centro, going to the park, and poking around the immediate neighborhood, and attending classes. We had obelisk presentations Thursday, so we spent most of Wednesday putting all that together. I’ve also accompanied many a group on trips to the nearby market (where for many, being able to buy wine is a novelty) and bank. And there’s a gelato place just across the street..

Italian class is going fairly well. I volunteered to be called “Mily” since there are way too many people with the same name in that class. Our teacher had doled out names, Amelia, Emily, Emi… I got Emily originally, and way more people call me “Emi” than “Mily” but I figured I would go different.

This weekend has been quite a whirlwind! I managed through my classes into Thursday afternoon. Or, Thriday if you will, since that is my last official working day each week. Some other girls were going out to a bar, and I elected to go with them on the why-not whim. It was an evening of ridiculousness, but I am glad I went. The bartender was Irish and spoke English, and we danced with Italians and Germans.

I tried to do homework Friday but was often “too tired” and thought that was a reasonable excuse not to be productive. Naps ensued after lunch in the garden. So I would do a nominal amount while sitting in the entryway to the centro, waiting to see if anyone was going out somewhere. The weather has been phenomenally good to my taste.

It didn’t take long for a small group to be passing through, looking for a place to buy tea. Score! So I went with them and we got lost and found the mausoleum of Hadrian instead, near the river. I didn’t have my camera, I regret to say. But we did find a few tea shops, and gelato too. The Piazza Navona is sadly under construction. But there are still tons of people milling around the area.

After that we had dinner back at the centro again, and that night was something called “waiting for la notte bianca” or waiting for white night. Check out www.lanottebianca.it, because it’s pretty awesome in general. White Night is a yearly festival, a Saturday night in which people stay up very late, some until morning.

We went to see an aerial ballet, which was accomplished with mirrors and a water-covered stage. Dancers slid across it doing flips and turns and also made designs with one another with their bodies. They looked naked, but weren’t actually. It took us forever to find that place, though, where it was being shown. Previous to this we wandered around the ancient areas, as someone had put mirrors and lights in the Forum artistically. We also saw that the Circus Maximus was filled with glowing orbs, but we only passed it by bus.

"You guys! It's the forum! It's still cool!"

For the second night in a row, I went to bed rather late and my legs and feet completely stricken with tiredness! Saturday came bright and clear, and I attempted to accomplish much more work than before.. with some success. I tried very hard to focus on reading for class because I knew that I would be up again Saturday for the actual White Night itself.

I had lunch at a delicious nearby falafel place for like 3.50 euro, which pleases me. When a group formed (a group in which I was interested in being included.. there are some people I’d rather be with than others even by this point) to go to dinner, I wasn’t really hungry yet, but I went anyway. The restaurant wasn’t open because it was too early, though, so we went to the park again instead. It was more full of people than I’ve ever seen it. Families and kids, and still the regular joggers and runners.

We walked through it and someone finally showed me where the pond is, so I finally know. I got to know some people a little better through all of these wandering trips. After the park, we went to dinner and I split a great pizza with Linda, and then we all went back to the centro to get ready. I meant to take a ‘disco nap’ before going out that night, but instead I went to the la notte bianca website which is overwhelming with stuff to see and do.

I had hoped to plan a route or at least a few things to see, but in the end I figured I’d be best served by just wandering around with little expectation or aim to see what there was to see. We amassed a group of about fifteen and got on a bus.

First stop, Circus Maximus. The glowing orb thing was absolutely sweet.

They change colors too! Each orb is roughly the size of a human head.

Circus Maximus is large ("maximus")

We promptly lost three group members in the shuffle and were forced to move on from there.

We wandered toward the Colosseum, and paused by the Arch of Constantine. There was an enormous golden praying mantis on wheels, surrounded and topped with people in intense costumes and facepaint. The people on top had guitars and other instruments.. so I thought it was a strange band show.

Yeah, okay.

They seemed to be preparing for something, so we waited a little while. Then a giant queen strode up (a woman also with elaborate costume and awesome stilts). I decided to wander from the group all the way around the mantis to take photos, and then it happened.

On the hill to the right of us there was a red flare and what looked like monkeys were leaping down the hillside in our direction. The queen was watching them and music had started. They ended up being people with awesome costumes and painted faces on pogo-stick stilts. They bounded toward our golden insect setting off fireworks as they went, holding flares and sparklers, bouncing around like mad. It made me think of my brother, to be honest.

They cleared an area by stalking around and making movements at us the crowd. I was somehow right up front behind some kids. Then the pogo dudes began juggling bars that the queen passed out to them. The band played on top of the insect’s back.

Then the mantis raised its head high and a hoop was hanging from its face, and a little woman all in gold did acrobatics up in the hoop to my utter amazement. I was totally petrified that she would fall and hit the cobblestone below, but she was awesome and really strong, and didn’t.

A bit blurry because it's hard to take night phots. But man. Mad. Skillz.

After her part, for which the expression on my face must have been priceless and even worth being asked “are you fifteen?” at the airport, the pogo men came back and did some more juggling and bouncing. Then they began to clear another path through where I was standing. The small woman was now sitting in the raised face of the mantis, and the golden insect began to move. The pogo men were setting off fireworks and bounding along beside it, and the queen was striding with self assurance. The little woman turned the mantis face side to side to look at the crowd as they moved past.

There's nothing I can say to make this photo NOT creepy as hell.

The whole thing was awesome and cirque-du-soleil ish to me, and was basically the most awesome thing that happened that night. I was completely amazed the whole time. I love random strange happenings like that, especially when they involve wild costumes and even gigantic insects painted gold.

We walked on after that, finding a dead end on the Via Sacra, and moseyed on, stopped briefly to hear a singer perform songs by Paul Simon and James Taylor. I began to sing Journey to myself and we moved slowly across a main square. It was jam packed with people. Amazing. Like Mardi Gras or something. We worked our way up to the Pantheon and sat down on some grass (grass in dirt in boxes, that is..). Grabbed some pastry in a nearby place (since they were all open all night for this event) and pondered what to do next. I wanted to go back to Termini for the naked ballet, but the longer we sat the more I wanted to go home. It was 2:10 anyway, and by the time we managed to maneuver to Termini it would be way too late (last show at 2:30).

Yeah self-taken photos. You can just see the grass below where we're sitting. And everyone looks that manic at 2 am.

Instead we fought our way home, which in itself was a massive undertaking. We had to fight crowds all the way to Argentina and the cat sanctuary. To “save time” and “be more comfortable” I thought we might take the tram, but it was a big mistake as it was the most packed anything has been. I wanted to get a picture of it, but could not really move to get into my backpack. No I did not get pickpocketed. Emily and I had to literally bust through a wall of people to get off the tram at our desired stop. Really we just wanted to get out of there.

From there we did find a relatively uncrowded bus to take us home. 3am. End of weekend nights.

Today I have homework to keep me busy all day. Happily there is a lot of sunshine in the garden and I will do my reading there, I think. Ypa!

So in "ancient ruins" class...

2007-09-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

I still haven't had a real class day yet. Our schedule is something like:

Monday: Breakfast, morning lecture on city ruins, lunch, Latin (for those that have it), then Greek (for me), and then Italian (also one of mine), then dinner
Tuesday: Breakfast, all day field trip for the ruins course, ending sometime before dinner
Wednesday: Breakfast, ruins field trip half day, lunch back at Centro, and the afternoon schedule of language classes and dinner
Thursday: Breakfast, ruins field trip half day, lunch, and Baroque art history (for those who have it) and Italian (for me) just until four (Italian is normally 6-7). Dinner is 7:30 as usual...
Friday: Art history field trip in the morning. For those who have it. Unlike me, who has no class after like four on Thursday.

This Monday was orientation, but we did have Italian at 6. Our entire class is conducted in the language. No I did not sign up for advanced; it's the beginning class. Sensei didn't even attempt anything like that until deep into our second year and the result was more of a cluster outside the classroom after we escaped with various intonations of "okay did anyone understand what our homework is supposed to be?"

But I'm not complaining. I understood almost all of what she said because she has a fair pace. I'm not saying I could re-create any of it or say it without prompting, but my listening skillz are not so bad.

Tuesday was a sort of self guided field trip, as we were assigned to groups of three and sent into the city on a hunt for various assigned obelisks. We were armed with our bus passes and maps, and a bag lunch, and my group did indeed find our assignments (one of which we have to give a fifteen minute report on, Thursday morning). We found some more besides. At our second bus stop there were some random ruins just sort of.. being there. And next to our obelisk was the freaking Pantheon. That's the ancient temple to all the gods. Inside it's been converted to a Catholic church, which is cool too, but not the way I kept picturing it before I saw it, since I have seen all kinds of classical diagrams and stuff.

So then we did a lot of walking to get to our second assigned obelisk and on the way we ended up passing, oh, you know, Trajan's market, and his forum, and column, and the freaking Colosseum, etc. I was wigging, since I recognized so much. My group members were a little less impressed or a little more composed. I mean, statues of Augustus in Primaporta style? Come on people. It seems that my art-hist prof taught me too well.

Augustus is the man. I got so excited and had to take this photo. Since I seemed to know something they didn't, several nearby tourists began to do the same.

So I'm about to have my first Greek class. And I seriously don't remember any Greek. Like, do they use the Russian alphabet? I forget...

Day One and Growing

2007-09-03T06:03:00.001-07:00

I think Rome is growing on me. Yesterday it seemed okay, but yesterday I was tired and basically just ragged from traveling all day. I went to bed early because at about 9:15 I couldn't keep my fuzzy brain on Harry Potter anymore, and was asleep almost immediately.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 with the alarm my roommate had set. She went running in the nearby park. I got up and dressed and went to the park myself. It seems enormous, as I wasn't even able to explore close to all of it.

Random gates.. to make you THINK the park is over. But it goes on.

In Nashville we have a Parthenon in our park. In Rome, we have mini churches.

Breakfast was delicious, and then we had an orientation meeting. After the meeting we all had walking tours of the immediate neighborhood area.

The weather in Rome is amazing. Imagine the best, most comfortable temperature ever. Okay, now add like five degrees. That's it, and it's perfect for me because I prefer the warm.

The Centro has small rooms since it used to be a convent until the 70s or so. Meals are served "family style" which actually means they put big bowls of stuff on your table and you help yourself, or the lady comes around and puts it on your plate if you say "si" to what she carries. Breakfast is half self-serve though.

There's a lot of stuff in easy walking distance, including a supermarket. There's a bbq pit in the garden which we are allowed to use on weekends since they don't provide meals then. The garden is spectacular because it has tables and chairs, and two fountains that trickle into fishponds. There's also an outdoor terrace thing overlooking the garden which is right outside my (barred) window. The window is open now and the open door at the other end of the room gives it a good breeze moving through a lot of the time.

There are trees and lots of shade in the garden, and I think that is where we will have dinner tonight as part of our 'welcome day' which is nice. Yesterday was kind of loose.. a little bit of being on our own, which is fine, and I found food with my roommate and some other girls. It was cheap and pretty good as pizza goes.

I wish I spoke more Italian! Sometimes I feel like this place is still a convent since the program is full of girls this semester. I think there are seriously ten males and 26 females. It's ridiculous, but not a travesty.

I've also been told we will have access to the American Academy's library, in addition to our bus passes and other perks of being here. There is also a phone on which we can recieve calls, and I'll post the number sometime or send it to my mom.

I think I'm ready for school to start, even though I kind of had school-type work to do all summer. It's what I know how to do, you know?

I might take a short nap before my personal classes orientation meeting..

2007-09-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

My computer says it’s 2:21am, but I know better. It’s the ripe hour of EIGHT twenty-one, and I’ve got some time before my flight begins boarding. I should have worn my hall “Royalty” t-shirt, because I’ve been treated like it. Sort of. But I knew if I carried my two pieces of ‘handgepaeck’ around any more they would compress my spine or something. So the director man told me to go get a coffee or something. But I’ma sit here a minute first.

So we met the sun on the other side of the sea for one of my life’s shortest days. I was afraid I would be assigned an aisle seat next to a big man who overflowed only slightly into my space and would make me stand up every few hours so someone could get past me. Flashbacks of the Spain trip, I guess. I expected to sleep without aid that time. Right.

This time I was better prepared and luckier! I was assigned the aisle seat, but either the other seat was never assigned or its occupant didn’t show. Result? Score. This means I get double pillows and blankets for one thing, and a place to throw all my crap for another. Plus I can skip the whole “hey where are you from?” bit and get right to the part where I sleep.

I set my watch for Italy time while I was in the car on the way to the airport. Catie told me to get on their schedule as soon as possible and I wasn’t going to mess around. But I couldn’t so easily convince myself that it was 11:30 at night when my body knew very well it was 5:30. But that’s okay. Mom gave me sleep drugs which did in fact make me sleepy.

Then dinner was served. I drowsed through it and slept, if not extremely well, for most of the flight. It was probably the least miserable I’ve ever been traveling overnight (I’m recalling not only Spain, but also the DC bus trip). I think lowered expectations had something to do with it as well. The less you care, the less you stress.

I woke up and pulled the darkness mask off my face at six or so to discover I had somehow obtained another blanket and another pillow to add to my nest of CD-player, Harry Potter book goodness.

The windows showed a sea of rippled clouds. Lovely. And below them, the overcast German countryside looked like something I’ve seen before, but not.

And then it was time to be thankful that Johannes taught me how to say and understand numbers in German. I wandered around trying to find my way, using signs (correct) and directions from a passport official (incorrect) until I stopped to ask some guy who was obviously part of a group carrying US passports if he knew how to get to A18. His party was headed in the same direction and they temporarily adopted me.

Which was sweet, considering they were running a bit late for their flight, were pulled to the front of the passport line, and put on a little zippy cart to be driven across the airport in style. No spine-compression for me, seeing as how I was just considered another part of the group.

And now I know it’s going to be one of those days. I woke up way too early and got too little sleep for my usual standard of operation. But that doesn’t matter because the adventure has begun. No photos yet although I considered taking one of myself on the plane, drugged smug look and all, but forgot or fell asleep before doing so. I also wanted to take a picture of the exit sign because, like Spain, they have a picture of a little man positively running away toward the door. But unlike Spain they are translated as “exit” and not “way out”. Way out where?

Addendum: In Italy they are translated "way out" as well.

Pre-Departure

2007-09-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Currently just trying to make sure I've done all the stuff I needed to do before I left... Starting this blog was one of them. I'll post airport stories once I have them. As for now, I'm as packed as I can be (yeah, that was fun) and my bags are under weight limit (one just barely) and I have twelve dollars in my pocket. In an hour and a half I have to relinquish my cell phone. That makes me sad.