Roman Holiday

So I’m back from my Roman holiday!  My train was somewhat delayed in Rome, the cause of which, it turned out, was another earthquake near Ferrara, 5.8, which was followed later by another only slightly weaker one.  All the trains had to be shut down in the north to make sure that everything was stable.  I heard on the radio about one small village where something like 70 percent of the buildings had been destroyed.  The woman next to me on the train in Rome had a tablet and pulled up a video of the quake; it was only a moment, but how violent it seemed!  Obviously in Rome we didn’t feel anything, but when I got home Elsa said it set the chandelier to shaking.

I was kind of grumpy about taking the slow inter-city train back instead of the fast, new, but very expensive train I’d taken down, but I actually enjoyed the return voyage much more.  I’d mixed up the IC and Regional trains in my head; the Regionals are the most busted and rather unpleasant to travel on, if memory serves, while the IC trains are the ones I remember best, with individual compartments of six seats each.  Of course, you used to be able to choose your seat, where now it was assigned, and my ticket was also just a text message on my phone--so the times, they are definitely a-changing.  The fast train was more annoying because everyone was so noisy; it’s an open carriage, and I seemed to be sitting in the car marked ALL-AMERICAN TOURIST CARRIAGE because there seriously seemed to be maybe a handful of Italians in the whole place.  The people I was sitting with were quite nice adults, but just behind us were a passel of Florida college girls who carried out conversations at super high volume for most of the way, including one girl who took it upon herself to read Rick Steeves aloud to the assembled company “Ok, so, he says the Colosseum was built by the Roman emperors as an amphitheater—we DEF have to go there, guys—and there were gladiatorial fights and….”  Obviously you’d be even more screwed if you got stuck with the lot of them on the IC train in your compartment, but I was lucky.  Everyone was chatty about the earthquake, though, of course. 

As the train made its way north there were fewer passengers; after Bologna just me, a guy, and a woman who had had so much plastic surgery on her face, she looked like a milder version of Jocelyn Wildenstein from Dlisted.  I had to try so hard not to stare at first—she had the massive implanted cheeks, and the tightened, upturned eyes, and she even had the surgical tape or whatever around her eyes, indicating a recent procedure!!  It was pretty hideous, but she turned out to be extremely friendly and chatty, and not an Italian by origin but a Russian who moved here 12 years ago to forget an old flame (this is the kind of conversation you can get into on public transit; with very little prompting you get the story of nights spent weeping over lost love, or, as on the bus in Rome yesterday, with absolutely NO prompting you get a diatribe from an old lady about how times have changed since she was young—pizza everywhere!!), which undoubtedly explains why I had an easier time understanding her than the Italian guy, who got off at Padua, so it was just the two of us until Mestre.  She complimented my Italian, but I have been humbled enough to know that it is not great.  Carla says the accent will take you further than knowing the proper pronunciation of the words, but that’s not something they just teach you, you know?  Anyway, the ride was pleasant.  I had been assigned the window seat, which was perfect, and brought along a bag of snacks plus my recent acquisition of il Grande Gatsby, which I would have finished if I hadn’t started talking to the woman (who, in another display of how these conversations go, wished me a florid farewell before getting off the train, telling me I was beautiful and to have luck in everything)

My time in Rome with Carla was really great.  I feel like I did both a great deal and nothing at all!  I haven’t been there in three years, so I really enjoyed re-familiarizing myself with the city, and I had a wonderful time revisiting certain key places I loved.  There was a certain lack of planning; I didn’t remember to look into booking a Borghese ticket until it was too late and they were sold out, which was probably my biggest regret.  Also I did not expect 60-degree freezing rain in Rome, like yesterday; had I brought my single pair of jeans?  Nope!  Carla and I went to the Protestant cemetery, although the place didn’t strike her with the same kind of evocative melancholy that it does me (she enjoyed making friends, or attempting to do so, with the cats who live in the sanctuary there).  We had a theological discussion underneath S. Niccolo in Carcere, checking out the Roman road and ruins that underlie part of the church structure.  We also visited Sant’Ivo on Sunday, the only day it’s open; took the bus yesterday in the rain to the distant mausoleum of Santa Costanza; and saw the Tintoretto show, where she patiently listened to all of my hard-won knowledge from exams.  There was also just a goddamn ton of walking, which is wonderful in the Roman sun!

Things have changed; things have stayed the same.  The Euro-cent Paradise was still there on Via Ripetta, for example (always a good place to grab a bottle of water), and so is the gelato place on Largo Argentina, where the vanilla has figs in it, apparently, which might explain why it tastes deliciously different than others.  The cost of the metro has gone up to 1.50; construction is in evidence on Line C, but Carla, with all the cynicism of a native, swears it’ll never happen.  The guided tour I once got at S. Niccolo in Carcere is now self-guided with a pamphlet and some wall panels, which was a bit less exciting.  The Pan di Stelle cookies of which Sara was always such a fan didn’t taste the same as I remembered (I bought a bag for the train, ate two, and blech!), and neither did…drumroll…Diet Coke, of which I had my first sips in going on two and a half years, when Carla and I had lunch at, of all places, yes, a McDonalds.  It was cold, rainy, and we were both starving when we got back from Santa Costanza, and the bus dropped you off right in front.  Sue me.  Hamburger and fries (this being Europe you have to pay .20 per ketchup packet, though).  I can’t even remember the last time I ate in a McDonalds (I’d like to say it might be as far back as when I was in Florence, because I went in there from time to time for a soft serve, for which I got weird cravings for some reason).  Anyway, I didn’t get a drink, but Carla got a diet coke, and I had two sips.  It was so gross!  It tasted like Pepsi, it was so sweet.  Granted, this was the fountain version of what is already, according to Carla, a hyper-sweetened variant of our acidic Diet Coke, but still.  If I was expecting any emotional reunion between myself and the once-beloved nectar, I was sorely mistaken.

The other part of our time together involved food and alcohol, both in large quantities.  Carla and I are both prodigious snackers and a terrible influence on each other.  We watched the Avengers, and not only had I eaten a bag of chips earlier, we managed to split an entire block of feta plus a box of tomatoes between us!  Granted that was dinner (instead of the chicken and potatoes we’d bought; Carla made that last night), but still.  Bad influences.  One of us gets up to get something to nibble on, and the other says oh hey, you can just bring that over here. We also drank a lot of wine—I took it upon myself to revisit the Trionfale market, where we shopped when I was here three years ago, and brought back a huge bottle of the vat wine (3 euro and it was delicious); we drank that plus at least two other bottles, plus whatever we drank out at dinner.  It was a lot. 

Other activities included me using her wonderfully fast real internet (sniff!), watching Sense and Sensibility, having dinner with Jasmine and Nick in Testaccio, and going to an boat party on the Tiber—which was not as fun as it sounds. Carla is still quite broken-hearted about Justin.  I didn’t realize just how sad she’s been until I was there, since apparently she feels the need to be much more stiff-upper-lip when we’re on the phone or emailing, so I’m glad we got to spend so much time together and she could talk it out.  I miss Carla already!  And Rome!  Sigh. 

Now I'm listening to a big thunderstorm that is quite literally rattling the windows--those wooden slats that Europeans draw down over the windows to ward off the sun?  Also have a high propensity to rattle with the wind and thunder, I'm learning.  I was watching what I could see of the sky for a bit, and it looked amazing when the lightning lit up the sky (it's not even raining); I so wish I could dash around the corner to see what the lagoon looks like when it's lit up by lightning, but I'm not stupid.  Once the neighborhood was filled with the creaking sounds of other residents lowering the slats, I decided to put mine down too.  Holy crap, there was just a big boom of thunder and that RESOUNDED in my room.  The slats and the window rattled.  First earthquakes now this!