I took you with me

I thought I'd share part of a kind of typical day in Rome, when I have a routine journey through the city.  

(The weather was cooler when I cooked up this idea, so you don't have to see me sweating. You're welcome.)  

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to an Italian language class that starts at 9am (for you East Coasters - that's 3am your time). It is held at the American Embassy, which is about 2.23 miles or 3.6 km from where I live.  Google Maps tells me that I can take 24 minutes to walk there or I can take 15 minutes by mass transit.

First of all, that's a ridiculous estimate.  Google Maps assumes that you are a speedwalker and that mass transit through a city like Rome - with touristsm mindlessly jumping out into traffic every which way - is smooth and without interruptions. 

Getting to the embassy generally takes 20 to 25 minutes by bus IF no traffic glitches occur and the sidewalks are populated by smart tourists who only cross at zebra (meaning, striped/designated) crossings. 

Mornings in the cooler months are really nice.  The tourist population is diminished to begin with, and they are generally not out at this hour. The street is quiet.  I can nod at the security staff that perpetually stands guard around the Senate as I go to my bus stop. 

Will it rain today?  Doubtful.  It just doesn't rain here very much.  Do the bags under my eyes have their own luggage tags?  Why yes, they do, because I am Not a Morning Person.

Hello from the bus stop.  There are three on my street, but only one of them is situated on the correct side of the street for the 'right' direction for my departure for Italian class.  I have already walked 450 meters to get to this spot. 

I am standing directly across from the City Archives, which enclose the Borromini church known as St. Ivo (which I've already profiled on this blog).  You can see the scaffolding that covers the front of the church, visible at the other end of the courtyard.

What you can't see is any other person at this stop who might be waiving down the bus.  If the bus is scheduled to make a stop here, you might ask, why is it necessary to waive at it to summon it to stop? Well, I've learned that if someone doesn't do that, the bus may not stop.
I've been bypassed by a bus I was waiting for, before, and I can only surmise that it was because I didn't attempt to get the attention of the driver before he motored on.

As a bus arrives, a potential rider is checking the ProBus ATAC app for Rome.  Ostensibly, this enables you to determine where buses are and how long they'll take to get to you. This is a wild presumption, though, because this would mean that the bus drivers have turned on their tracking devices OR that the devices are working OR that the app is running smoothly without glitches.
On any day, any or all of these presumptions can lead the average bus rider astray.
It is highly likely that no buses at all will be visible on the app, or that only some are visible on the app, or that the buses will mysteriously appear and disappear on the app.  The rate of disappearance/reappearance is largely dependent on what kind of hurry you happen to be in.
If you're running late to your appointment and/or destination, then of course all bets are off.  The app will show you zero buses. 

Notice the stop name 'Malatesta.'  This roughly translates to 'headache.'  And believe me, dealing with Roman buses can be a big one.

You might have noticed that I and others stand at this bus stop.  There are very few bus stops in Rome that actually have any proper seating.  Most of the time, you stand. 
Additionally, there are even fewer bus stops with a structure that provides shade.  Almost all of the time, you seek shelter where you can find it, even if it's across the street.  If that's the case and, like me, you're desperate for shade, you wait for the bus while standing across the street until you see it coming for your stop.  You then play a dangerous game of Frogger in an attempt to walk across traffic to get to the bus stop before your bus does. 

Once on the bus, you take note of whether a seat is available.  There are signs on some of these buses that establish capacity.  There may be as many as 35 seated people on the bus, but there may also be twice as many standing people.  See all of that available real estate? Grab some, plant your feet well, and hold on.  With BOTH hands. I'm told that the reason the bus rides are so herky-jerky is that their brakes are so worn, the drivers have to stomp on them to get the bus to stop.  Awesome

And here we go, passing by the archeological site known as Largo di Torre d'Argentina.  It was uncovered in the 1920s when Mussolini was busy widening roads. 

We are now passing the Capitoline hill, best accessed by the staircase that begins in the center of the image. The staircase to the left of the center goes up to the church for which the bus stops on this important piazza are named:  Aracoeli (ARR-uh-CHEH-lee).  St. Mary Ara Coeli - (St. Mary of the 'altar of the heavens').  Follow that link for some fascinating history of the church and the hill.
If you take the middle staircase leading to the top of the Capitoline hill, you arrive at Michelangelo's designed piazza, which hosts the (replica of - the original is in the Capitoline Museum) ancient Roman bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.  Go over the crest of the hill to see a killer view of the Roman forum. 

But we can't go over the hill this morning.  We have an Italian class to attend.
Yes, there are many motorinos here, and yes, the notion of lanes on Roman roads is a very hazy one.

Passing by the monument known as the 'wedding cake' by many Romans, because it's SO large and SO white...the Fascist-era monument to Vittorio Emanuel II - the king who unified Italy in the late 1800s. On many Roman maps, the name for this site is, instead, 'the Altar of the Fatherland.' The eternal flame and tomb of the unknown soldier is guarded here, too.

Slightly left of center is the Column of Trajan (with a figure of St. Peter installed on the top), which anchors one end of Trajan's forum (the ground level of which is a few meters below the level of the current road).

The umbrella pines help us get a sense of perspective.  As they converge in the center, you can just make out the outline of the upper contour of...that's right, the Colosseum (otherwise known as the Flavian Amphitheater)

I've now disembarked from the bus and am walking to the embassy. I am crossing a wide thoroughfare lined with orange trees on either side. The morning traffic is picking up. Cross on a zebra crossing and with a 'green man' indicator sign lit for you, and you'll probably make it alive.  Probably.  Motorinos and cyclists can and do dodge the law.

The building ahead of me is a part of the embassy.  There is a large complex of buildings on a rather historic site in Rome.  For security purposes, I won't be photographing anything else here. 

But I'll include a shot of my feet climbing the outdoor stairs after I have shown my badge to the nice Italian security personnel that guard the embassy and I have gone through the entrance.  From the bus stop where I disembarked, I walked another 450 meters to get to the embassy. 

So in the interim, I've stumbled badly through the hour of Italian class, checked my mail, run some other errands, and have now returned to the orange tree-lined street to catch a bus back home.

This time, my bus stop is near a cinema, which sometimes shows American films in 'original language,' unless it's the deep end of summer, and then the cinema closes...until early September. A number of Roman cinemas do this (in addition to a number of other kinds of businesses...a puzzling phenomena I'll address in a later post).

I *wanted* the 492 bus, which would take me to my street, but the 85 (which is a shorter ride and translates to a longer walk) came first, and the weather's not bad, so why not take it?

And this is more like a typical bus ride in the late Roman morning.  As the bus hurtles down a hill at a reckless speed...

...I keep a tight grip on the bar. It's a delicate balancing act, particularly if you have a full backpack on:  you can't turn around a lot because you'll hit someone else in the face (aside from the Amazonian Northern European and American tourists, I feel a bit tall here), and if your feet aren't properly placed, all it takes is one slammed set of brakes and you're struggling to stay upright. Note that my earbuds are in place.  This allows me to listen to something else other than someone talking incessantly on their phone, which is a common occurrence.

And just before I disembark from this bus, we pass the Column of Marcus Aurelius.  If you saw the movie Gladiator, then you may remember the esteemed Irish actor Sir Richard Harris playing the part of Marcus Aurelius, and Joaquin Phoenix playing the part of his megalomaniacal son, Commodus.  In the case of this column, Commodus commissioned it after his father's death. A nice strategy:  honor your late father and simultaneously promote your piety to your ancestors.  

So I've left the bus for my walk home, which is 650 meters. The walk takes place largely through narrow streets, where you must be vigilant for vehicles like this to squeeze through.

Let's pause for a minute and look at these cobblestones.  For public works, they provide a mostly rapid solution to the need to get below this level to work on gas or water, as they are pretty easily removable.  You're looking at dry masonry, essentially (imagine bricks with no mortar, but perhaps some sand and debris wedged in between instead).  For the driver, bicycle rider or walker, however, the unevenness, the potential for outright holes from missing stones, and the semi-slick surfaces pose a host of problems.  How a young woman tourist (wearing thin-soled sandals) can blithely walk on these - or how a mature Roman woman (wearing stilettos) can carelessly stroll on these - without looking down all the time is one of my life's enduring mysteries. 

So perhaps this is not a part of an ordinary day for any and all, but perhaps, for some pious souls in the neighborhood, it is.  I thought I would include one artistic treasure - among the many I pass by, daily - that a person could include on their regular sojourn.  To break things up a bit.  To get in touch with the self and with some beauty.  It's a 'stop and smell the roses' kind of interruption.
So as not to injure your neck from all of the gazing upwards, this church (and others with remarkable ceilings) provides a handy mirror, which is why you see me in this shot.

I have taken a meaningful pause in the church of St. Ignazio di Loyola.  

Besides that amazing ceiling painting (another gander at that comes up soon), it has a number of other treasures.  Here is a model of the church dome - which was actually never built.

You're looking at an illusionistically painted interior for the dome that never was.  The artist (who also painted that fantastic, adjacent ceiling) helps us imagine a darkened, coffered architectural space that is not actually there.   

This is a truly Baroque space, if there ever was one.  Everywhere you look, there is polychrome marble, gilding, dramatic sculptures projecting into the viewer's space, extreme forms that break away from the previously sedate geometry of the Renaissance.  Those spiraling columns are a motif intended to evoke the legendary spiraling columns of the Temple of Solomon. 

Back to that ceiling fresco...  Painted by a Jesuit, Andrea Pozzo, the image celebrates the lives of Jesus and Mary.  It includes allegorical representations of the four continents.  This 'trompe l'oeil' ('to trick the eye') method of painting punctures the otherwise flat ceiling surface, and allows us to marvel at how we can 'see' to the heavens. Such illusionistic ceiling paintings became quite vogue during the latter half of the 17th century. 

And this unique item located in a chapel....fascinating. I've yet to determine what exactly it is or how old it is, but around its cylindrical drum and dome are depicted smaller models of religious structures from around the world.   

A pagoda (center)

I want to think that this is Hagia Sophia, with its 4 pointy minarets, but the proportions are off.  

each structure gets a label, which includes location and, I think, numbers indicating capacities

And now that we've exited, have a look a the grand facade of the church. Note the scale of the people relative to the structure.

Off we go, rejoining the route home. Restoration on the building on the right requires scaffolding and some particle board partitioning, which means that the handy 'sidewalk' (which you can see an equally narrow version of on the right side) is covered up.  A walk home, here, usually entails some stopping and hugging a wall or ducking behind a parked car in order to allow a moving vehicle to pass.

Continuing down a narrow street...

And what emerges ahead?

A temple, a tourist crowd, lots of cameras.

A glance over my shoulder as I exit this piazza. 

Onward.

The owner's stopped in a small grocery store and left the dogs outside. It occurs to me that while I've seen dogs in almost every conceivable public space here, they must not be welcome in grocery stores.  I have not seen dogs in those spaces. 

And yet another church on my route:  Saint Luigi dei Francesi.  The French national church of Rome.

And to the left, the Italian Senate, guarded by all manner of different military servicemen and women.

Almost home. 

I'm lucky to have an elevator in my building. And comparatively speaking, it's quite large.  You can fit 3 or 4 people in it.

And back in the apartment, this little green-eyed 'wolf' is what greets me. "
What did you bring for the kitty?

It's been a year....

As of the 21st of June, we have been in Rome for one year. The time hasn't flown by.  It has BLITZED past us.  So it's time for a review.

On top of Hotel Minerva, June 16, 2017, looking out over the Pantheon.  Day 360.

Our twilight view.

Below is a shot from Day 1. Bleary-eyed, unshaven and jet-lagged, we walked to the thing that we had named for each other as a reminder of our aspirations when we were at various breaking points, utterly sick of sorting through belongings and agonizing over decisions regarding what to store, ship, sell or give away after finally combining households (for 5 years, we had maintained two - with each one near our respective jobs in two different cities).  For four months leading up to this day, we had been finalizing all the kinds of things you finalize before moving out of the country, abandoning work offices, scrambling to fit in one more doctor's appointment, obtaining bulk prescriptions, planning the move with two elderly cats in tow, sleeping very little and worrying so, so, so much.

We arrived to our apartment, barely furnished with Ikea furniture that the embassy supplied for us until our things arrived.  We hovered over two confused, exhausted old cats, and quickly learned that they were spooked by the loud sounds caused by, well, everything in a space that had no rugs or other similar items to absorb sound. But we'd made room in our luggage for bedding for them, so they at least had a soft place to be.

I haven't really spoken much about Smokey, pictured on the right, sporting her last 'lion cut' of the previous summer. She is about 15, and enjoying her current time as a single pet because, as you can see, Sal never cared for sharing anything - the sofa, bed, a bowl, a house, an address, humans - with any other four-footed creature.  

My memory of this time is colored by struggles with persistent jet lag and Roman summer heat (the way to keep your place cool is to keep the windows shuttered during the hottest parts of the day, which is fine except that you have no daylight to work with, and hence, no sense of time...and cool dark spaces make me want to take naps), pretending to cook with a highly limited set of embassy-furnished tools, worrying about the big old kitty, occasionally watching some shows on our laptops, confused foreign grocery store wanderings, numerous evening explorations of this wild neighborhood, and having zero prospects for meaningful work in my new adopted city - a simultaneously exhilarating and uneasy scenario. 

When we could, we went out to a couple of little casual soirees last summer, intended to celebrate an American holiday or welcoming the new crop of ex-pats:

Fourth of July party at an ambassador's house.  The air was as sultry as it is today. Lesson learned: go to the tops of buildings or land masses to catch a breeze if there is one to be had, or sit and stew in the airless bowl of July in Rome.

A few weeks later, a newcomers' welcome at a villa...We match (middle aged brain asks: did we plan that? I can't remember) and he still looks happy to be with his severely shorn spouse.  This was a great haircut that was kind of wasted on me, since I never intended to have my hair cut that short.  But I still have to give props to the stylist who did it, because he truly did what he could with a preceding, lousy cut that I could not live with. 

We had objectives, which mostly involved various masteries of the more challenging aspects of being in a city that has been continuously inhabited - and by more than its fair share of aliens and ex-pats - for well over 2000 years.

And how are we doing, one year later?

As you will recall, our stuff arrived two months later, and we have not obtained much else in the way of stuff...save for wine and a few books.  

We can watch a show on a television screen, which is a little larger than a laptop screen. 

What shows are available for us, of course, is controlled by access regulations for American programming available to European audiences (translation: we see about 50% of what our friends and family can see at home).  

We've never arranged to get cable, so unless I go back to the States, I don't watch 24 hour news, channel surf or see commercials (unless they're on Youtube). 

These things are blessings.

The grocery stores are no longer mysterious. I now know that I cannot go to two locations of the same corporate name and expect to find the same products - because that kind of predictability is not a feature of Italian living - so each is valued for different things. 

I also understand that this place generally operates on an economy of scarcity.  More on that in a later post.

My vegetable vendor, fishmonger, chicken man and butcher help round things out nicely. I am a known face at their places.

I can cook now (although wanting to in this heat is a tall order sometimes, because the circuitry of a kitchen here can only accommodate the appliances that keep your food cool or make it hot...the cook gets a fan, at best). This is the season for expanding my repertoire of salads. 

How about a little dessert? Peaches and shortcake. 

  I have a pretty solid mental map of the neighborhood. The new challenge is making my way somewhere while entirely dodging direct sunlight. Yes, I am a vampire.

I can navigate the mass transit systems (this occupies a fairly large portion of my brain capacity because, as they say, questo Roma).

There are four of these signs at one (rather pivotal) bus stop, each bearing as many as 5 different bus lines.  To navigate, one must be adept at using Google Maps, the Roma ProBus app, and telepathy. If you learn anything from me, then this should be it:  never take bus 64, which is jammed with tourists on the way to and from the Vatican, and therefore also enhanced by seasoned pickpockets.

We all know what happened to the big old kitty. 

This translates to our feeling sad more often than either of us probably admit.

The space he occupies in my heart will never be filled. I now understand how others can feel this same way and live with that feeling.

And when I see this big guy on the top of the Janiculum hill on a semi-regular walk I've taken, my heart hurts. To be clear:  I don't worry about him.  His clipped ear tip (left side) tells me that he's a part of the TRAP (trap and release) program to keep Roman feral cat populations under control.  He looks healthy, and while he frankly regards me at close proximity, he's probably disinclined to let me get any closer.  But he's almost Sal's doppleganger.  Almost.

But...happiness? What about happiness?

We have made new friends. Good new friends.

We know some of our neighbors.

I can generally take a stab at speaking some faulty Italian, and I can understand a great deal more of it in written or spoken form. I am accepting the fact that I am not a quick study of language, even when immersed in a place. A foreign tongue is like algebra to me, and those who knew me in the 8th grade will remember that I simply took an extra year to master that math (because the early year of it was pretty abysmal). I expect much of myself, and so I'm struggling to get to a peaceful place with this reality. 

Primed to take advantage of the gift of proximity, we have either travelled to new destinations or have plans to travel to new destinations.

We have revisited destinations we knew we liked the first time (you'll see more about all of this later).

Rome's rose garden.

Florence for a birthday - San Lorenzo cloister.

Piazza Navona for a 3D light show

Assisi in January - coldest I've been in Italy, hands down!

Paris in the Spring(?) - with scarf and jacket in the shade, 

 And those prospects for meaningful work? What have I been doing?

Assuming that my anticipations were correct - that I wouldn't be able to work much or at all in a town where you can't throw a rock without hitting an artist or art historian...what have I been doing instead? 

I've been allowing red-leaved trees to grow out of my head while drinking prosecco.  Clearly, that's what I've been doing.

Have I been sitting at various outdoor cafes in quaint little Roman neighborhoods, twirling a perfect forkful of spaghetti with basil (a la Eat, Pray, Love)?

Have I been reading selections from my shelf of 'to-be-read' books while tourists do the 'Caesar shuffle' (which means, I'm told, rushing around to see the top 5 or 10 sites in mere hours) past me at one of any number of splashing, picturesque fountains? 

Have I been window shopping and spending my spouse's money on snazzy Italian designer labels?

Have I been standing cheek-by-jowl with Romans in various coffee shops, complaining about the latest traffic strike? 

In that order, some answers:

A few times, yes. (Some pasta has been more perfect than other pasta, though.)

Yes to reading - a little.  No to reading at fountains.  (I learned long ago that Italy isn't interested in providing people with many - or in lots of cases, ANY - free places to sit.)  

Yes to window shopping, because it's a true art form here. No to spending money on Italian clothing. (Almost everything here is made for tiny people with little feet. But I have gotten a leather backpack, because the size of that, relative to me, is irrelevant) 

No. I quit coffee years ago (a tragic development, by any Italian's assessment). The traffic strikes are complaint-worthy, but it's such a routine occurrence that you really have to spend your energies on figuring out another way to get somewhere.

Here's a big surprise:  I have actually been working.

In my fields.

With mostly, but not all, American students.

In Rome!

Roman Art and Architecture class selfie before heading into the Borghese Gallery. Couldn't have asked for a better first group of students to take around Rome.  Virtually every day, we had class in a different location (or cluster of locations). I take pride in knowing that they learned some things, like where to get good craft beer and burgers, how important breakfast is before a three hour stint in the Vatican and St. Peter's...oh, and some stuff about Roman art and architecture.  Good times.

Much more inclusive shot of the whole group and their dedicated faculty member (and his family - although it is fair to say that college students are getting younger and younger, so you could mistake the stroller occupant as a prodigy), taken one crisp morning by a fellow student, Tony Martinez

The beginnings of a portrait demo for painting students at the American University in Rome.  The subject: my lovely class assistant, who had just graduated the semester before. 

Blurry painting class selfie.  Great group of people with whom to work, Americans and Romans.

Student visitor to our class exhibition.

 Newcomers or covert returnees for an elective credit (talked out of majoring in art by someone or by society, of course) to painting, they all still worked diligently. 

The very careful and helpful maintenance team of AUR, installing a senior studio major's capstone work while she supervises.

Proud senior.

Just recently, I delivered a guest lecture to a summer program for American students.  We visited some of the highlights of the Trastevere neighborhood.

Here, we are in the nun's choir of the church of St. Cecilia (which you have already 'visited' with me in a previous post).  The importance of visiting this particular space - which entails ringing the buzzer of the Benedictine convent next door to the church, paying a small fee, and being escorted by a sweet elderly nun named  --what else, Sister Cecilia - up in an elevator in small groups - is the chance to see this important discovery:  a 12th century fresco by a contemporary of Giotto di Bondone (the 'Father of the Renaissance') named Pietro Cavallini.  These fragments of this Last Judgment fresco testify that the Early Renaissance painters of Italy did not just work in Tuscany, despite the fact that many more examples of their work are visible in that part of the country. 

I also recently staged an educational 'micro'-game with some Classical Summer School participants at the American Academy of Rome, which launched a discussion of Reacting to the Past game usage in history and language classes in both collegiate and high school settings:

Here, a Classical Summer School student at the American Academy of Rome plays a role in my one-session game about choices between art and life.  She is advocating that other role players vote to save the art.

I feel extraordinarily fortunate.  I was grateful at the start of this wild ride, and I'm even more grateful now. This coming year, I will be able to continue much of this kind of work.

Among all of my speculations about this experience, I was absolutely correct on this one thing:  I could not have been more ready for this any sooner than now.  My body tells me that it would like to have had a shot at walking these hard and uneven Roman roads (and climbing the stairs!) about 10 to 15 years ago - and I hear it often, creaking and complaining - but my mind and my heart tell me that this kind of fulfillment had to happen just when it has happened, and no earlier.

I have ideas about future posts involving things like 'what I've learned,' and recaps of adventures I haven't yet shared, but this is what I'll close this post with, for now:

It's been a year.  No regrets.