Rome, Round One

If you had asked me in the planning stages of my little adventure what I thought Rome would be like, I would have said something like “Amazing, for sure! Rome during Holy Week- it’s going to rock. I will see and understand the roots of my faith and of the whole of Western Civilization, and I will come away transformed and enlightened!” I wanted to like Rome. I was absolutely determined to like it.

I did NOT like Rome. At least not the first time around.

One always hates to admit to not liking a place, especially when it’s part of an awesome world-travelling trek. On this sort of trip you are supposed to be having the time of your life every second, and you don’t want to admit to yourself and other people that you aren’t! It kind of makes you look bad, like you just didn’t try hard enough. You Negative Nelly, you!

Well, listen, I gave it my dardest for five days straight and at the end of that time I still found my experience of the place to be very unpleasant. Which was disappointing. A line from The Princess Bride came to mind as I sat bedraggled and dismal on the bus after a trying first day in the city: “Get used to disappointment.” However, coming away from Rome the first time around I still felt that the experience, though miserable, was still valuable. In many ways more valuable than an easy and enjoyable one would have been. If nothing else it was certainly Lenten, so there you go! It’s been difficult for me to write about my days in the Eternal City because I needed a few days to move past my disappointment and wash the grit of Rome out of my hair, so to speak. Now, after a few days in sunny Barcelona drinking sangria and soaking up the smiles of the friendly locals, I’ve recovered and am ready to give Rome a fair treatment. I think.

Roma Trastevere Train Station

My first day in Rome, fresh off the train, I was confronted with what would become one of the main challenges of my stay. Get ready: The Roman Public Transport System. Adorned with graffiti and thoroughly grimy, crammed full of unattractive and unfriendly extremely pushy people, inefficient and disorganized, run by the least helpful officials I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting… not user friendly, to say the least. It reads like a short list of all the things that offend my sensibilities and my temperament. Learning to navigate a route through the city using trains that aren’t labeled or on time, trams so full of people you can’t move, buses with inexplicable routes and the trashy sweaty metro system is going to be an ordeal no matter which way you slice it. For me, learning to do it mostly on my own was a complete nightmare. My first day in Rome, which was the most Lenten, it took me three hours of anxious and bewildered bus and tram switching in the hot sun packed in with mean smelly and trashy people to find my way back to my lodgings from the city center. I have never felt so alone and lost in my life.

Practicing wine tasting with Keith

Luckily, I was not alone in Rome. I was able to stay in the dorms of an American study abroad program with students from Thomas Moore and Ave Maria University, and their kindness and companionship were the bright spots in my stay. The very first night I arrived, they took me out in Trastevere where I experienced lamplit windy streets filled with chic bars and restaurants. Over my first bottle of Est! Est!! Est!!! and a giant cup of gelato I received tips and encouragement for my stay. Having my witty and wonderful cousin Keith in Rome was a huge bonus as well, both for practical advice and moral support. To be honest, I feel like without the connection to these people I would not have made it in Rome.

The Villa- My Home in Rome

And that is one of the most valuable lessons I gained from this experience. After five hours alone in walking through a crowded Vatican Museum I felt myself wanting to talk to someone- anyone- in order to relieve the tension of the experience of so much strangeness, strain, exhaustion and sensory overload. I had to laugh to myself as the dramatic last scene of Into the Wild played over and over in my mind. “Life… alone… not worth living…” For me, it was either laugh or cry as waves of self-pity swept over me at my aching feet, jostled hair, and general indignation at being treated by hundreds of people as an object in their path to be pushed out of the way.

So! I think I’ve done enough complaining and now that you have an idea of how I felt in Rome it’s time to be objective and actually talk about what I did in Roma. I was able to see quite a lot- the Vatican Museum, Trastevere, Piazza Navona, St. Peters, Trevi Fountain, many of the major churches including St. John Laterine and Chiesa de Gesu, the Coliseum, and lots of other famous monuments and piazzas etc. I ate gelato at least once a day and had a cappuccino every chance I got, went to a gorgeous Easter Vigil mass at St. Maria in Trastevere, prayed in front of the relics of the cross at Santa Croce on Good Friday, and bought myself an excessive number of scarves.

First Cappuccino in Rome

"World's Best Cup of Coffee"

Although my first five days in Rome were a gray haze of uncertainty, exhaustion and a million small trials, there were moments of light. Climbing to the top of St Peter’s Basilica and seeing Rome from the heights gave me a broader perspective on the city, both literally and figuratively. I was able to rise above the immediacy and triviality of my own frustration, and see the curious mish-mash of past and present, greatness and banality that is Rome. A place almost overshadowed by the past, where the greatest monuments of Western Civilization are the stuff of daily life. Gypsies and cheap souvenirs lean against the awe-inspiring walls of the Coliseum, and loud flashy tourists mix with quiet simple nuns.

On the top of St Peter's

I felt the hope that after Barcelona, when I returned to Rome for a few days before leaving for Greece, I might grow to have an affection for the city. As to whether that happened or not, you’ll have to wait till the post after next to find out! Sunny Barcelona is the subject of my next post, and I can’t wait to write about the sights and sounds of Spain. A little preview:

Sienna: Truffles and Towers

My 3-night stay in Sienna was my first real solo project. As I got off the train in Sienna station and walked into the dusk looking for the bus stop and wondering how I was going to find my hotel, I had the panicky yet excited feeling that this was a make-it-or-break-it moment. It was sink or swim for young Ann in the wide, lonely ocean.

And I am happy to say- it went swimmingly!

On the streets of Sienna

Once safely in the hotel, somewhat flustered after a 30-minute walk around the city feeling awkward and lost but filled with a deep determination find my lodgings on my own, I breathed a triumphant and relieved sigh. The hotel Alma Domus is a small but cozy affair run by Dominican sisters and attached to the house of Saint Catherine of Sienna, and I felt secure and sheltered in the austere room lined with religious art. I rallied my spirits, showered and got prettied up and went out to enjoy my first ever meal for one at a restaurant. Goat cheese fondue served in a little ceramic dish over a tealight candle, a mini bottle of Chianti Classic, picci pasta and chocolate-pastry cake with limonchello made for one of the best meals of my short life. While sipping wine and watching the moon hang large and luminous over the Tower of Mangia, a single thought rose in my mind: “This trip was such a good idea!!”

On the train, I made friends with a cheerful Italian named Feliccio who told me, “Sienna will-a become your new love; you will leave-a your gheart in Sienna.” Despite his incoherent English he was quite correct- it may be too early in my journey to leave my heart anywhere, but I cannot deny that Sienna was absolutely lovely and suited me to a T.

Whereas Cinque Terre seemed to exist almost entirely for tourists, and was comprised of sleepy little towns filled with souvenir shops and restaurant with names in English, Sienna is a place where Italians actually live and work. Granted it is a major tourist town, but I was able to have some experience of Italian culture especially when walking the streets of Sienna in the morning as people are going to work and in the evening as the locals take their evening walk. The city itself is a medieval town almost entirely preserved with a labyrinth of narrow cobblestone streets. Tall brick buildings shield the streets from the daylight, giving the town an intimate and mysterious atmosphere. The history of the city and the accomplishments of its past citizens give it atmosphere enough, but what I really loved about this place was the local color. These people are fiercely proud not only of their heritage, but also of their culture as it is today. They take pride in their food, their wine, their neighborhoods, their land, their personal appearance, and their whole way of life. The city is well kept, the restaurants are excellent and inexpensive, and the citizens friendly and accommodating.

Enjoying the sun under the olive trees

I was itching to see the countryside as well, my Americanized imagination conjuring up scenes from Under the Tuscan Sun, so I booked a wine tour of Tuscany my second day there. The tour group was led by an animated slim Italian woman in heels with wild curly hair and a thick accent. Our group was like something out of a movie- an America family with two kids in sneakers and t-shirts, two Japanese couples with no less than five cameras between them, an old French woman with a cane and her grandson in tow, a hearty Australian couple in sunglasses and a quiet young British couple. I guess that makes me the independent American student free-spiriting it through Europe. After I somehow managed to get lost in a tiny city with about two streets, much to the chagrin of the tour guide (who was on a strict schedule and, being Italian, naturally resented this fact) I became instead the air-headed blonde girl the Australians took under their wing. Luckily the whole silly-blonde-girl-delaying-the-tour-by-fifteen-minutes episode was eclipsed by the old-French-lady-disappearing-into-a-forbidden-coffee shop incident and I was no longer persona non grata on the tour.

An actor impersonating Dante in a square in San Gimignano
-what a treat to hear Dante in the original Italian!

The trip out to the medieval city of San Gimignano gave me all the views I could ever want of undulating hills covered in vineyards and punctuated by stands of tall evergreens. The Chianti valley is just oozing with fertility and wellbeing and beauty. In San Gimignano, over which Dante presided as magistrate for many years, there are over thirty towers (there used to be over sixty) built by the nobility in medieval times to showcase their wealth and power. This makes the tiny city into a mass of competing slender towers in various designs, each one striving, like the families who built them, for dominance. To my active imagination, the towers and the landscape tell a story of a remarkable people. It’s easy to believe that some of the greatest politicians, artists and visionaries of Western Civilization came out of Tuscany; people like Dante and the Medici and Leonardo Da Vinci. In this land where beauty is so pervasive the imagination has endless fuel for inspiration, and the raw fertility of the land leads to wealth and plenty. Spiritedness and a taste for finery are the natural result of the tremendous wealth and beauty available in a place like this. The people are like their famed Chianti wine- fiery but refined.

The winemaker teaching me the proper tasting method

Which leads me to my experience with wine tasting! In a small family vineyard in a courtyard surrounded by neat hedges and flower beds I sampled the violet-scented, ruby colored Chianti for which Tuscany is known. A dark-haired wine owner in an apron explained to us in animated yet authoritative Italenglish the proper procedure for tasting wine, and led us through a sampling of some of his finest custom-made wines. The Americans and Australians were especially enthralled by this performance, and by his explanation of the winemaking process that had been passed down in his family for hundreds of years. I enjoyed myself quite a bit between watching the interactions between all the various nationalities as more and more wine was consumed and losing myself in the smell and taste of the best wine I’ve ever come across. As time wore on I, as the single blonde American girl, became the favorite of the winemaker and his brother and was referred to as “the Princess.” Seeing as this scored me free wine and heart-shaped cookies, as well as a special toast, I decided I was OK with it. The group stumbled back to the tour bus laden with bottles of delicious wine in red and gold bags, and it’s safe to say that a good time was had by all.

Me on the Duomo Panorama

I could go on for pages about Tuscany, what I learned and what I still want to discover, the past and the present, but let me just end with a description of the food. Because it. Was. Incredible. Picci is the characteristic pasta of the region, and is thick and chewy. I had mine served in a creamy brown sauce with sausage and mushrooms, topped with basil and Parmesan cheese. Bruschetta are thick pieces of toasted bread served with a variety of cold and warm toppings such as goats cheese, salami, chicken liver pate, and simple tomatoes tossed with olive oil and basil. Speaking of olive oil, it’s all made locally and is thick and golden and often infused with lemon, basil, rosemary, or even truffles. The tiramisu is soft and rich, dusted with coca powder and drizzled in chocolate sauce- and served in generous rectangular portions that fill a salad plate. Pastries are varied and numerous, flavored with amaretto, hazelnut, ricotta, coffee and citrus and dusted in powedered sugar. Panforte is a dense, chewy yet soft taffy-like substance that comes in flat round cakes and is made of honey, studded with almonds and streaked with chocolate. It absolutely melts in your mouth and is sometimes surprisingly spicy. And, finally, Chianti wine: crimson in color, it smells like flowers and slides smooth and hot over the tongue, is aged in oak barrels for a minimum of two years. I don’t know anything about wine but after tasting the special grape blends of the jocular Italian winemaker I am sure that my taste in wines has been forever changed. One of the many things which I am sure will be changed about me after this trip has run its course!

I’m currently in Rome, and after six days in this vast and sometimes frustrating city I am flying to Barcelona tomorrow. As long as I can keep posting about one place before I leave the next I feel like I’m doing pretty well! Happy Easter everyone, Ciao!

Cinque Terre: Lemons and Lovers

I am so delayed in writing about my time in gorgeous Cinque Terre that I almost want to simply skip to Siena, but I can’t quite bring myself to miss describing my outing in the Italian Rivera. I found the sights and tastes of tiny Manarola, a cluster of colorful houses on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, to be primarily fresh and invigorating. The cold splash of the surf on the dark crags of the cliffs, dashes of lemon and pesto punctuating the sweet fresh seafood, the long rocky climbs up cool green terraces, the clear incandescent blue of the ocean and the sweet white wine created in my mind an overall sensation of crispness. I especially enjoyed tasting limoncino, fresh anchovies bathed in lemon olive oil, lobster ravioli and pecorino cheese for the first time. The food was good, cheap and melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and always accompanied by crusty white bread. Needless to say I took every possible opportunity to indulge!

Picnic in an olive grove with resh bread, local oranges, provolone and pecorino cheeses,
homeade pesto and a bottle of DOCG Chianti

Izzy likes Chianti!

I also found that Cinque Terre is apparently The Place for lovers- or one of the places. Between Manarola and Riomaggiore there runs a cobblestone path along the cliffs overlooking the sea called Via Dell’Amor or the Lovers Lane. As I walked the path, I got to see the romantic and quaint tradition people have of fastening locks to the railings to symbolize the sealing/ locking of their love with their significant other, and then throwing the lock into the sea so their love can never be undone. Locks clustered on most of the railings and on the nets lining the cliffs, and just as numerous were the names scratched and written in pen and paint and every other medium imaginable into the rocks, the walls of lovers lane, and the white marble plaques listing the names of famous lovers through the ages. A simple statue of two lovers kissing in profile was just completely covered and surrounded by locks, with no possible place left for any couple hoping to seal their love.

Except the places made by the men cutting the locks off with a chainsaw.

Yes, the one day I walked lover’s lane was the one day out of the whole year that the park maintenance people come and cut all the locks off from around the famous lovers’ statue to make room for the locks of the upcoming tourist season. As I watched the metal be cut and hacked and thrown into a dingy red bin to be trashed I felt at once cursed and privileged, and most of all amused. My Australian friends pointed out to the men doing the methodical chopping of relationships between cigarette breaks that it was going to bring them terrible luck. The man holding the chainsaw laughed and said in a thick Italian accent, “Bad-a luck? I think you mean bad-a lock.” I found myself doubly impressed by his witty repertoire and calloused crushing of tender dreams. As we walked back along the path we were able to witness the very last lock being cut, and I took a picture as the murder of love became complete.

As far as the trip in general goes, I have some interesting observations concerning nationalities. 1. I’ve met some lovely people on my trip so far, and the best have been Australians. My roommates at the hostel in Cinque Terre were two cheerful Australian girls, and I’ve met a few Australians in Siena while doing tours and sightseeing. Every Aussie I meet is just as sunny, friendly and practical as can be! I’m starting to think my next trip will have to be to the great Down Under (which, my sources tell me, no Australian ever actually calls their native land.)So, a big Hooroo for my new Mates!

Australian Buddies! Ali, Me and Jo

2.  I have an update on Operation Go Undercover As A German Fraulein. My original plan for trip was to give myself out as a stern German chick so that no one would try to take advantage of me. So far, this course of action has had mixed but interesting results. The only people who think I’m German are other Germanic people (including citizens of Switzerland and Austria) and Americans. The neat thing about this is that Americans won’t try to approach me. But with Germans it’s the opposite- although they immediately identify me as German, so much so that they start rattling off to me in German without a moment’s hesitation, they tend to single me out as the person to ask if they need anything. Some examples: before I even left the U.S., in the airport in Charlotte, some middle aged tough-looking German guy in boots, a Harley shirt and a leather jacket asked me to watch his baggage while he went to get some coffee. We were in the United States still and he assumed I was German. And, out of a crowded row of people sitting in the terminal, he asked me for help even though I was half a row down from him! Also, an old German lady in a blazer and brightly colored scarf with powdery hair on the train in Italy asked me, as I was walking past down the aisle, if I would open her twist off coke bottle. I don’t mind it, but I find it kind of singular for sure.

On the flip side, Italians, Spaniards and French people immediately identify me as American. I’ve resigned myself to this fact for two reasons: one, I need to be able to communicate with them and none of them speak German, and two, they treat me much nicer if they think I’m American. So, I’ve decided to go ahead and be American here in Italy. The Italians want to interact with the world on a level totally different from the level on which Germans interact- they are not disrespectful, they just want to be able to talk and joke with everyone they run into. They seem to see Americans as more friendly and able to interact with them as they would want, whereas Germans hold themselves aloof in a way that I think irritates the Italians. I’ve observed this when German people eat in restaurants here- waiters treat me and other Americans with more ease and pleasantness than they have towards Germans.

I’m in Siena now and leave for Rome tomorrow- on to the seething metropolis! I’ll be sure to fill everyone in on Siena as soon as I can get settled in Roma. Let me just say, though, that I am sad to have only one night left in Tuscany, now that I’m here I wish I could spend a month enjoying the picci, panforte and rolling green valleys.Here's a little taste of what is to come:

Food!

Some pictures of yummy food I have seen/ eaten (or both) since I've been here:

Fresh Bread

French Fudge

Truffles

Weinschorle (Wine with Sparkling Water)

Pfaelzischer Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, Leberknodel (liver dumpling)
and Bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes)

Mmmmm Hmmm... 

"It's Just Like Riding a Bike!"

Here I am, starting my very first post on my first-ever blog, which will be all about the first real trip I have ever taken alone. A trip which just happens to be a self-planned and custom-made tour of Europe, paid for with a working year's worth of my very own hard-earned dollars. Lots of firsts and lots of dollars! And as the firsts increase, the dollars will decrease, hopefully not too quickly.

My first solo international flight was one experience where the ratio of dollars to firsts was not very favorable, although I'm told a direct round trip to Europe for $708.50 is a steal as aeroplane tickets go. Most disappointing was the fact that I didn't get the seat I requested. I asked for 11A (a nice window seat close to the front but not too close), and got 19E (third to the right in a squished middle row of four seats towards the middle). The coolest thing about 11A was that I also requested it for the flight back, so then I would have been sitting in the same seat both ways and could have included a sophisticated snippet of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets

"In my beginning is my end...  Dawn points, and another day

Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning" (East Coker, I, 14, 48-51).

and seemed very enlightened and hip.

But then, as I think will happen pretty much constantly on this trip, my disappointment turned into a blessing as there was an empty seat next to mine and I could spread out and get some shut eye. Which I could not have done in cramped little 11A, despite the cool transatlantic view of the sun and the moon being in the sky at the same time which is one of my favorite things about flying (even better than stealing the little blue airplane blanket :).

So, I've arrived. And after two tired and dazed days during which a lot of my energy was spent in trying not to be too overwhelmend and terrified by the prospect of two self-motivated months in places where even the light switches are wierd and confusing, I went out into the city today. It really was, like they always say, "Just Like Riding A Bike!" Especially because I actually went into town on a bicycle kindly lent to me by the Senks, the family with which I am staying here in Germany. The more people I talked to and the more things I tried, and the more I realized that I do have the skills and knowledge I need to navigate this thing. I found my way around the city with increasing confidence, executed turns and hand signals on my bike with dexterity after only a few wobbly incidents, asked lots questions at the travel agency, train station and celluar store, and most importantly found my shoes!

Shoes are essential! They say Europeans look at your shoes to try and figure out where you are from. Also, shoes take you everywhere. Most importantly, a good pair of travel shoes has to be able to be paired with as many of your travel clothes as possible. I love my shoes, they are a kind of light blue cross between converse and keds made out of some sort of soft leathery material. All for only 20 euro!

I have a bit of somewhat mundane news to write about, so I'll put a few more pictures in between to make it more interesting.

Thomas Senk and I eating gelato in Worms

I found a place to stay in Rome in the convent of Casa Maria Immacolata, about 7 blocks outside the walls of Vatican City! After days of frantic searching and over 30 e-mails inquiring after rooms something finally worked out, which I suppose shows that persistence pays off.

Breakfast with Izzy- Coffee and a Pastry

I am probably not going to make it to Annecy, because I want to leave myself time to get ready and it will cost me a train trip out of the 8 that I have on my Eurrail pass. But I plan on hitting it on my way back up through Europe after Greece, so no worries! By then I will be less scared and better able to deal with being alone... with the French... 

 LOL: Germans have a brand of
 granola bars called "Corny"

So, I feel like I've created a pretty varied and comprehensive first post, and now instead of simply writing about Europe Im'a go for a lovely bike ride around the sunny green asparagus fields of a small German town with Thomas. Try not to be too jealous.

Over and Out!