The Long Goodbye

These past two weeks in Rome were amazing. I experienced so much in such a short time I don’t know if this blog post will be able to do the two weeks enough justice. I still remember when we finally were ready to go to St.Jons for the very first time. In what I would later see as typical Italian fashion, we were eating for the bus for almost an hour. The moment right there set the tone for me for the entire trip. I remember looking around the airport and being very impressed with all the Italian men I was seeing. Erika on the other hand, was not very impressed.

As we arrived to St.Johns, I was tired and ready to call it a day but surely enough we had to start our first adventure in room that evening. That first bus experience made me have an internal panic attack since I don’t like crowds or buses in general. After awhile I got used to riding on the buses. I much preferred traveling in the trains because it reminded me of New York City. I guess the looking at the transportation system can give u an idea at how European views on personal space differ from American ones. People had no problem getting really close to each other and touching each other. That’s not something we really find here in the states.

I remember the first full day we spent in Rome. We visited the Fora and I was really tired and hot. I started to doubt if this trip would ever have moments of freedom and fun. Eventually I learned to power through the long days and I am glad we saw the things we saw. I appreciated it more when we come into contact with tour groups and I would realize that they weren’t seeing all of Rome, but we were. Or at least we were seeing a much more complete version.

I also appreciated that we travelled to place ourselves even though I wasn’t found of it at first. It allowed us to have more day-to-day interactions with the people of the city, and be able to see what our readings really lacked. Most of them lacked good accounts of what the every day people were doing. We would know what important people and writers were doing but never the average roman.

One thing I truly regret about the trip was not having any Italian knowledge at all. Most people said that if you know Spanish you can get away with Italian and I figured this was probably true. I would like to prove those people wrong. I often could catch/understand very little of what was said to me in Italian, and I wouldn’t even know how to respond. Reading it I think was a bit simpler but as our restaurants adventures prove, it was still no easy task. I wish I had known some basic Italian because I think the language barrier made me feel less likely to socialize with Italians or even go out on my own.

On that note I also regret not taking amore active role in trying to navigate the city. I would often rely on being with either Gia, or Liz, or even Dan and Jackie. I didn’t really get the hang of things until the last 3 days were I became confident enough to go out on my own and comeback in peace. I wish I had gotten to that point a lot sooner because I wouldn’t have felt as limited as I did.

My favorite place I think would probably be the palatine. It was my favorite day and we saw some of the most beautiful and interesting remains on that hill. I enjoyed traveling around it with my fellow Romani, and making plans to eat dinner that night and eventually go out later that night. My least favorite place I think I traveled to was the Vatican. While I enjoyed touring the Vatican necropolis, I didn’t like touring around the church itself. I found it to be over crowded and it didn’t really have anything I thought was worth mentioning. It just seemed like another really big church in Rome to me. Granted by the time we had seen the Vatican, we had been to several large churches already.

I wish we had gone to the mosque that is in Rome. When I first learned about it I was amazed by the fact that there was a mosque there period. Visiting the Jewish ghetto definitely made me want to go there even more. I found it interesting to saw how the catholic faith dealt with citizens of a different religion in the city. I t would have been nice to compare. On a side note we didn’t see and I don’t think there are any protestant churches in Rome, so the fact that there is a mosque is even more intriguing.

One thing I owe to the eternal city is it gave me confidence. It is in Rome where I went to my first gay bar. While this wasn’t apart of the main trips agenda I still find it significant, because it was a big step for me personally. Before this trip I had only been to one other gay bar with a larger group of queer friends. In Rome it was just Maria, and me whom I didn’t know terribly well. I was making a big leap because I don’t normally do these sorts of things, and by the end of the night I felt really comfortable in that environment. I owe that to Rome. I entered this trip with the thought of trying new things and trying to be in different situations than I’m used to. I never thought I would use Prof. Fords quote in this context, but I thought I would lean into discomfort.

As a whole I will miss Rome and the people I was there with. I do intend on returning and revisiting some of the places we went to. I also intended to visit the places we didn’t get to go

Journal 5

The castel San Angelo was probably the most painful solo excursion to go to. I went with a big group to the castel. It was an incredibly hot day that day as well, which would become more relevant later in the story. When we finally entered the main part of the castel, I was excited because the castel was featured in the movie Angels in Demons. I wanted to see how accurate the internal part of the castel was depicted in the movie. Instantly I realized it wasn’t accurate at all since were going up ramps and stairs, while in the movie the characters were going down when they entered.

It was dark and cool inside the castel, which I very much appreciated. I couldn’t take very good pictures inside though but I wasn’t too bothered by that. We finally reached what I thought was the top and found open space with people walking around. We weren’t really sure what to do, until we found a museum in a room off to the side. We went in and saw what I think may have been renaissance paintings of different saints. One saint in particular kept reappearing. I cannot remember his name but he was often depicted with either arrows going through him or having the wounds of arrows shown on his body.

Another part of the museum had non-saint paintings. They were still religious often depicting a mother and child probably Mary and Jesus. We then found some stairs leading up to another open space. There we found the wooden remains of a catapult. There were more stairs that led to the surrounding balcony of the castel. We looked at the city from yet another amazing view. The breeze up there was quite nice. We walked around the castel and found yet again another set of stair, which led to a mini museum.

At this point I was getting tired and of course God threw more stairs at us to go through. Theses were very narrow though and spiraled up. When we came out I knew we were at the very top. We looked around and saw the city horizon again. The sun was shining brightly on the roof where we were. As we took pictures, we realized we were missing people. A group of people went to find the missing people and the rest stayed up there. That was a really big mistake. After five minutes of waiting it got really hot up there. There was no shade on that side of the building, and I could feel me skin tanning even more. Eventually we found everyone and finally headed down.

We reached a café that apparently is in the castel. There was nice cool shade supplied from the covering greenery. I got a juice to drink because I ran out of water. Guerry and me thought we lost the group and almost left the place before turning back. We found the rest of the group and made our way out of there. The castel had so much to see it’s hard to choose one thing to see. It was a hot and long day but I’m glad I went,

Journal 4

Throughout the two weeks in Rome, I have been to the Campo dei Fiori several times. It is a popular open space in Rome and we passed through it in order to get to other places. The Campo is home to Forno, which is said by Jackie to have the best to go pizza in all of Rome. When we went in for the first time I was surprised that they had to go pizza because I pictured having pizza to go in Italy was a sin. The store was small and cramped. The style of pizza was different than I was used to back home. I was also caught off guard when the pizza man chopped off a slice of pizza as if it were piece of meat. That was definitely new. Continuing around the campo during the day, I wandered around the markets.

The markets are only open during the day. I’m not sure when they set up but I would imagine its sometime early in the morning. They appear to close around 5pm or so. I looked at one station that was selling pasta and small bottles of different kinds of alcohol. I was intrigued by the pasta and considered getting my mom a package of pasta. I then thought to myself, “My mom wouldn’t know how to cook them the Italian way.” I moved to the next station witch sold touristy clothing. I didn’t like anything I saw, mostly because none of it felt authentically roman or Italian for that matter.

I then found myself in an awkward haggling situation. I saw a hat at a hat stand that I liked. I tried it on just to see and I liked it but I’m not really a hat person so I put it down. The vendor then came to me and let me try another one and told me I looked great. I was flattered but, not falling for his trap. I have been to Turkey so I have experience with vendors. He offered me the hat for 20 euro, and I said no thank you. He dropped the price to 15. I still said no because I honestly didn’t want the hat. Eventually he said ten, and said no thank you and walked away. I felt awkward but proud because I normally like a good bargain.

I quickly got bored of the markets as they mostly appeal to women. So I decided to go up one of the streets to find a clothing store for men. Of course most of them were stores that sold suits. I found a couple regular clothing store, but they were way to expensive for my taste. None of them were of any name brand I have seen in the states, which confused me. Either way I did notice that all the stores seem to have an abundance of shirts in my size, which is usually not the case in the states.

The campo at night is almost a different place. At night all the markets clear out leaving a largely open spaced. The space is surrounded by mostly restaurants, and bars. They become paced with people at night, as Italians eat their dinner and others begin their nightlife activities. Groups of people crowd the statue near Forno. It really is a nice place to spend a night hanging out. My favorite bar I saw there was called Sloppy Sam’s. Its motto: “Classy in the front, Sloppy in the back!”

Journal 3

I think I’m most proud of going to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It was the first site that I went to using my own skills along with Guerry. Neither one of us was quite able to navigate the city well but we needed to get our solo excursions out the way. I realized our blue guide had a map in the back along with all the major sites of Rome. We used it to get to the church and back. Before arriving to the church I new nothing about the church and only read a quick blurb about it in the blue book. It was much larger than I thought it would be but after two weeks in Rome, large basilicas stop being awe-inspiring.

Since neither one of us knew what was of importance in the church, we decided to see what the blue guide had to say. Much to our look it had an outline of the church and a list of things we should see. We started with the first 3 things, A-C, which seemed to all, be near each other. They all happen to be different mosaics that were designed specifically for the church. Though we couldn’t really tell which mosaics were which. I wasn’t to impressed with the mosaics since they were all near the roof and hard to see. We then moved on to the next thing, which was the same structure in the center that the Lateran church had. This one was unique though because we were allowed to walk down it and see what was down there. I was impressed with this because at the bottom was a statue of a pope kneeling and praying. A few feet in front of him was an altar thing with a silver baby Jesus statue.

This gave me a hint of what this church was about. As we continued moving around the church we saw the various side chapels in the church. Only two of them were open to the public. One of the others was reserved solely for prayer and no pictures can be taken. Another was simply closed for renovations. I noticed that the roof of the basilica was largely the same as the Dominican church we went to on the Aventine. It was just a flat rectangular surface. Most other churches we’ve been two don’t share this quality, so I wonder the significance of these roofs.

The blue guide then mentioned that the church has a museum with things of “relative interest.” I interpreted that is being not of interest but Guerry wanted to go to it in order to explore the church more. As we went we paid our four-euro and entered. I was surprised that museum was underground. I was also surprised that we only saw one other person in the museum. I figure its not heavily advertised as part of the church. The blue guide only pointed to a few things for us to take note of but most of the items we saw were either paintings or robes of priests and popes. As we kept walking we began to realize that this museum housed a large number of pope memorabilia. Robes, gloves, journals, painting, crowns, were all among the items on display. We thought we were done until I found yet another long hall way we had yet to go through. There was a large amount of golden objects like crosses and crowns that way. By the end of the trip I realized that this church must have had great importance to the popes at one point since they seem to have so much stuff from them.

Journal 2

As I returned to the Piazza de Spangna I head towards the Keats Shelly Museum. This place has significance to me because it came up a few times during my groups research of the piazza. The museum is what use to be an apartment complex where John Keats and Mary Shelly’s husband lived while in Rome. Immediately entering the place I was already amazed. When purchasing my ticket to enter the museum, the cashier caught my attention.

She spoke English fairly well, better than anyone we or at least I had encountered so far while in Rome. As I bought my ticket she spoke to Guerry and me about what expect upstairs and offered us a guide. I then thought to break a fifty since in Italy and probably most of Europe, large denominations are frowned upon. She said she didn’t have enough to break my fifty, but then she gave me some useful advice. She told me that the next time I take money out the ATM I should hit other amounts and take out multiples of 20 in order to get lower then 50’s. Her co-worker chimed in and spoke with a British accent and expressed that’s how “us brits” beat the system. At that point I realized that the workers were mostly English and that’s why they spoke impressive English.

As we head upstairs we entered the starting room and a woman came and informed us of what each room was and that we can sit in the starting room as long as we like and not to touch anything in the rooms. Guerry decided to sit down before we toured the rest of the house. I decided to just walk around the room and read the plaques of information that were around the room. As I walked around reading I learned of the history of the house. I then read that President Roosevelt was involved in preserving the house and making it into a museum. This surprised me because that suggested an American influence, which I didn’t feel when in the museum. I assumed that this was governed by England especially since the British tearoom is just down the street from the museum, and the workers are all British.

I then entered a small room off to the side, which was said to be the original entrance to the apartment. It had some information on Byron. There were some letters and pictures in the room. There was a window that over looked right onto the Spanish Steps. It was pretty cool to see them the way, these writers did back when they wee alive. As I head back to the main room Guerry was ready to walk around the house.

We proceeded to go to the other rooms where there were more displays of pictures and letters. This time they were related to Keats himself. Most of the letters were correspondence between him and other note worthy literary figures of the time. Some were just letters to his family. On display was what is called a life mask. Apparently before Keats died, one of his friends made a mask of his face and it is said to look very much like him. I then read about tuberculosis on one of the plaques and learned that it was a common and almost untreatable illness in Keats time.

In the final room was John Keats Room. It is hear that he spent his last days, with his housemate Shelly. They have reconstructed his bed to the way it would have looked like back in Keats day. This was done because apparently the pop declared that anyone who died of tuberculosis must have his or her things burned. By the way his bed was small. Overall I left the museum feeling sad for John Keats because he died so young and almost as soon as he got to Rome. It was definitely tragic.

Journal 1

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini

Probably the most unforgettable solo excursion was my visit to the Capuccin crypt. Initially I thought it was a small church with a note worthy cemetery. I wasn’t really interested in it because I wanted to go to the church that housed the depiction of St. Theresa on fire. It was shown in Angels and Demons and I wanted to see it but Guerry said that Dan subtly challenged her to go to it. I wasn’t up to argue, and just wanted to get the assignment done so I agreed to go.

When we found it, we weren’t really sure what to do. We didn’t know how to get into the church so it led for an awkward five minutes. We then saw a line forming off to the side of the main entrance. As we waited in line we debated what there was to see and why Dan thought we would never forget it. I was confused, as I didn’t see a cemetery entrance anywhere. We donated a few euro and boy, I was not prepared for what we saw that day.

The first “room” was covered in bones. I was confused as to what was going one. I saw skulls stacked on top of each other. The bones all seemed to be organized and shaped into patterns. Guerry then told me to look up and I did. What I saw was a chandelier/hanging candle thing made completely of bone. I was freaked out and walked from underneath it. As we kept walking the next room was even creepier. There were full skeleton remains made up in positions still with their friar robes.

The walls were decorated with different bones from the body. It seemed like every bone was used for something. The last room made me very uncomfortable. There were about four full skeletons of what I assume are children. They were smaller than the priests seen in the other rooms. I wanted to get out once I saw that and surely enough we did. All we could do was gasp and reflect on what exactly we had just seen. I still am not sure how that was even possible. Dan was right, I wont be forgetting that anytime soon.

Momentary Blindness

As I sit on a bench I close my eyes. I hear laughter from a group of people. They’re talking low but I can still hear them. It sounds like they’re to my right but behind me a bit. It sounds like there’s a mix of guys and girls in the group. I also hear what sounds like kissing near me. It is on and off every few minutes. I hear many birds chirping around the park. A loud plane passes by overhead.

The traffic from below the hill can be faintly heard. Large trucks passing by are more easily heard than the standard small cars. I hear water from the fountain in the middle of the par poring out. The sound is being disrupted and I hear splatter for a few seconds. There was probably someone drinking from it. I feel nice (much needed) breeze pass by me. I hear a noise that sounds like steps behind me. I feel and hear a bird fly fast above my head. I begin to smell oranges, and I open my eyes to see Allan eating oranges from the trees.