Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Eternal City
Pictures of our adventures in the Eternal City may be found here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158494564333.299236.796519332
Rome is definitely the closest thing we have to Minas Tirath, the White City. If I were going to be called home to the clear ringing of silver trumpets, surely this would be the place for it. Guilaine and I have been based in a teeny tiny apartment in the heart of the old city for four days now, and we have another three until we take an overnight train (read: adventure!) to Paris to meet up with Papa Andre. Four days is practically no time at all - on Rome's vast time line it is not even a perceptible blip, so you can imagine how we've been scurrying around trying to see as much as possible.
The very first thing we did on our first morning was go on a run to get a lay of the land. This run brought us west across the Tiber (so many important dead bodies have been dragged from its depths since ancient times!) to the base of an impossibly steep hill. We paused to look at each other doubtfully, and then charged ahead, breathing like fatally wounded rhinoceroses by the time we reached the top. The eastern view was breathtaking and well worth the trouble. We turned and continued at random (having long since ditched our map), going in more than one circle and dodging between the cobbles and many off-leash, city-sized dogs. Finally we found the Aurelian Wall, built in the late 3rd century, encircling the old city. It cast a long shadow in the mid morning sun, and our sweat chilled in its deep shade. It took us down the hills (one of the seven hills of Rome??), past complacent moped-riders, splashing fountains and old grannies, and right into Saint Peter's square. We were a little shocked to find ourselves under the huge, recognizable dome - we had been so preoccupied we didn't even see it coming. We stopped running and walked reverently across the square, flooded with tourists in disorderly lines, all orbiting around the massive fountain, whose gentle splashing was lost amid the roar. No Pope sightings, but we will have another chance tomorrow when we take an official tour of Vatican City.
Runs have definitely been a highlight for us- it is a great way to see the city. We've also taken some walks of epic proportions with notable destinations: the Appian Way and the catacombs, for one. The Appian Way is an ancient Roman road on the outskirts of the city, still paved with cobbles as big as your head. The fields spread out from this artery, colored with poppies and wisteria growing off the trees in veils, but don't be fooled. Underneath is an expansive network of tunnels, the halls of the ancient dead. We went into the catacomb of St. Castillo, final resting place of popes, martyrs, saints and lots of normal dead Roman aristocrats.
Other highlights include the Forum and the Colosseum- both were worth wading through the humanity and patiently refusing to buy parasols and fans from pushy peddlers while we stood in the ticket lines. It was amazing to think about how long these ruins have survived, but also somewhat sobering to realize how much reconstruction and salvage work had been done on them- kind of like the existential question about the old, patched pair of trousers (if you eventually replace every inch of fabric with a patch, are they still the same trousers?)
We also went to a Roman bath, which Guilaine enjoyed as a spa experience, and I enjoyed as a historical experience. First you spend an hour alternating between room temperature and 100% humidity rooms, and they give you this nice soap that is supposed to open your pores. That part was nice, and the old men in barely-there swim suits gave me the double advantage of feeling very modest and also very authentically ancient (I think their topic of conversation might have even been authentically ancient Roman: politics and women). The second part of the bath involved getting scrubbed down with a brillo-pad sort of sponge by this very intense woman who looked like my middle school gym teacher (her necklace even looked like a whistle around her neck) and then plunging into a freezing pool. On the plus side, my skin was so raw (radiant?) when I came out that I managed to make sustained eye contact with a gorgeous Italian man getting off his moped- a flirtation method Molly Obrien has been trying to teach me since 8th grade. Mi dispiace, non parlo Italiano Signore Moped (sorry, I don't speak Italian).
While all the main events are pretty exciting, the filler time is actually probably my favorite part of the experience so far. Guilaine and I have been keeping well-hydrated with cappucino and fresh blood-orange juice. They don't do take out coffee here in Italy, you just stand at the coffee bar and have a quick drink in a real cup. It is so much nicer that way! And allows for better human interaction. Gui's Italian is so good we usually get to participate in some pretty telling conversations about Americans:
"Ah, mama mia! These Americans are crawling all over the place! And none of them even try to speak the language!"
"Ah, I'm sorry..."
"Why should you be sorry, eh? How are the pastries? They are new today..."
"Very good, I like the cream ones"
"You should have had the marmalade, the marmalade ones are much better..."
This works as long as I don't open my mouth and blow our cover, Gui just has to explain what is going on in a whisper, and I just nod and beam at them all and say "grazie" very quietly, like I am to shy to talk. The food is really stellar, especially coming out of England -I repress a shudder when I compare the fresh pasta and sweet tomato sauce with the tin-can beans on dry toast. The ingredients here are very simple, but fresh. For dinner tonight I had pasta with cheese and pepper. It was so delicious I almost didn't have room for gelato (almost). The market is worth a mention too- there are probably many in Rome, but there is one in particular close to our apartment that takes up the whole piazza, full of flowers and fresh fruit and crazy-shaped pasta.... we got a little box of tiny strawberries after our run this morning. They were all no bigger than my thumbnail, and sweet sweet sweet, with the little white blossom petals still clinging to the stems around the top.
That is all I have time for right now, yet there is so much more to Rome than I've said here. It is a bustling, vivid place, full of traditions as strange and old as the pagans, but also sights as common as a policeman (carribiniere) flirting with a group of "lost" lady tourists. As vivid and lively as it is, I am still incredulous when I stop to think how this city thrives on decaying ruins, surrounded by miles of catacombs, where the ancient dead sit enthroned.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
My Love Affair With the City of Oxford
The Carfax clock tower has just chimed 11:00. After the little introduction chime, it gets to the second stroke of the hour, and then the University Church clock tower begins its chorus, several pitches lower. The regularity of this idiosyncrasy is like a song, and I can cue the University Church clock like a conductor ever hour if I want. In about five minutes there will be a little rush of pedestrain traffic under my window as the pubs empty and people stumble home. And then all will be quiet for the night, until about 6:30am when the delivery trucks start parking and beeping and honking and crashing around in the alley beneath our windows. I have started recognizing some of the voices of the men who drive those trucks. For instance, I can now distinguish the thick accent of the 6:45 delivery truck man (who I imagine with a ruddy complexion) from the higher pitched, slightly fairer-spoken 7:00 delivery man. They yell things to their underlings, who shift boxes noisily at those ungodly hours, but do not speak loudly enough to carry up to my fifth floor windows.
At 7:30am exactly, the street-sweeper-mobile will drive down New Inn Hall Street going North, its rumbling fading away as it drives by. At 7:35 it comes rumbling back down the street, the sound growing like a wave, and then fading as it makes it way back South towards Queen Street. As soon as the night's trash has been swept away, it is finally safe for the city people to come out and start walking around importantly with their coffees. The lady at Morton's coffee house (right next to our building) doesn't know me yet; sometimes I run down for a cocoa during our half hour break between lectures... but she does know the man who arrives right after me. Every. Single. Day. He is bald and wears no cap, but has a very normal looking sort of sports jacket, and usually a newspaper. He is the type of person who blends into a crowd perfectly, but I think the Morton's barista lady has a little thing for him. She coos over him and calls him by name (Robert) and always gets his latte ready in advance. It must be nice to be a regular. There you are, some schmo in a nondescript sports jacket, and nobody notices you until you become a regular at this cafe....
And that is how it happens. One day, you're just an innocent bystander, a tourist, a visitor, a foreign student, blending in with the crowd. And then, the next day, you're a somebody. People recognize you, and you know street names. You're a regular customer at this hole in the wall cafe that nobody knows but you and your office mates. The barista has a crush on you, and calls you by your first name. You have a favorite table. You have certain cracks in the sidewalk you avoid stepping on, just out of superstition. You wait to go outside until 7:36 because you don't want to run into the street-sweeper-mobile as it blindly chugs North and South up your road. You can cue the church bells. It is easy to think that just because you know the city so well, it knows you back. It is so easy to convince yourself that because you plan your day around the movements within the city, it plans its day around you. A person could start feeling mighty important going on like this. A girl might start feeling like she's in love, and not know why, just because she can sing along with the clock chimes.
The first month of my time at Oxford was so vivid and confusing. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I didn't know which pubs to try, or, when I looked into a boutique window if it was where snobby she-she people shopped, or if it was for environmentally minded hipsters. I couldn't tell you if Morton's cocoa was better than Cafe Nero (its not, its just cheaper), I couldn't tell you how to get to the bus stop, or when the libraries closed, or what streets to avoid at night. I was afraid of being in public places, I think, because I was just so unused to it all - none of it was mine, and Oxford was a cold, indifferent stranger, full of secrets that were too dear to be entrusted to the likes of me. At Saint Olaf, I can sit on the low wall outside the chapel, and know that no one is going to reproach me. I can put my feet on the couches in fireside with confidence, and even go to the Buntrock bathroom in my socks (errr, that is... if I wanted to... not that I have...). At first, Oxford would never have allowed me such intimacies. But now, I feel like it trusts me a little more.
When I first came to Oxford, I used to see people sitting on the steps of the Bodelian, smoking, drinking coffees, laughing with their friends. I didn't have any friends, I was too scared to walk into a coffee place for weeks, and I certainly didn't feel any entitlement to my own personal perch on the steps of a 400 year old building. I am not sure if I do now, even... but I'm so close. Oxford has softened a little to me, and I'm not even sure when or how that happened. Its the little things that add up, I guess, but now, with less than a week to go, I feel like this city might possibly love me. When you know someone so well, it is impossible for them to not know just as many things about you. When I sing along with the church bells, tolling the hour, its like finishing my friends' sentences. When I take a shortcut through a little pedestrian alley, its kind of like the city is sneaking me through one of its back doors, for VIP members only, no tourists allowed. When I go on runs in the 12th century fields, I know exactly where to turn into the seemingly impassable hedges. About twenty yards down, there'll be a gap in the underbrush, and a jump-able wooden fence leading into the next set of fields, though you'd never see if it you didn't know it was there. I equate this with going through my best friend's backpack and knowing exactly where they keep that tube of chapstick I'm sure I'm entitled to borrow... in the little tiny pocket, on the right hand side. The gargoyles and grotesques on the old buildings are all recognizable now that I've walked past them so many times. When I close my eyes I can see the west facade of the Old Bodelian, and I can see the crocodile grotesque, the dragonish waterspout gargoyle, and the little stone detail of the farmer with his sycle, all in a row. It is kind of like being able to close my eyes and see a familiar face, and know where every freckle is, and just where the dimples appear.
I don't know when this love affair started. All I know is that I will be very sad to leave this beautiful city. These things happen gradually. You feel so uncomfortable and lost and shy in a place, and then all of a sudden, it is almost your home. It is the same with new people. Oxford could be a home for me, I think. It is so beautiful, and has much character and personality.
But Oxford is a city, and not a person. Three and a half months may be enough time to learn a city plan and figure out where the good cafes are, but sadly, it has not been enough time to get to know my fellow students very well, a fact we have all sheepishly affirmed with each other in trailing off sentences and murmurs. Places are just empty stages, even if they are very beautiful and old, and rich with history. Even if they are so easy to personify, and you can almost convince yourself that an actual city loves you and takes care of you like a roommate. Oxford is just a stage. There are people running across it every which way, but they are not my people. I know the stage very well, but I keep mishearing the stage directions, and all the cues are being called out with such a thick accent, I haven't quite caught on yet. I don't know who is playing a character, and who is being their real self. This the cast and crew of Oxford, and if I had another semester, maybe I would come to know and love them as much as I love the cast of Olaf or Vermont. As it is, I leave Friday morning at 6:30 am, and I have to say, I am very eager to be meeting a familiar leading lady of my own cast- my sister will meet me in Rome at 3:00 when my plane lands, and it doesn't really matter that we're in a new setting, we'll be together. The same will happen in Vermont in May, and at Olaf in the fall, and the happy thought consoles me for the loss of the beautiful city of Oxford.
I am glad to be leaving so early on Friday morning. There will be fewer people out on the street, just the delivery men whose voices I am so used to hearing through my open window. It will be just me and the city, together one last time, for a fond farewell. Someday I'll come back, and we'll do things right, Oxford. I'll meet you're family, and you'll meet mine, and of course they'll love you as much as I do. Isn't that what all lovers say at their last meeting?
At 7:30am exactly, the street-sweeper-mobile will drive down New Inn Hall Street going North, its rumbling fading away as it drives by. At 7:35 it comes rumbling back down the street, the sound growing like a wave, and then fading as it makes it way back South towards Queen Street. As soon as the night's trash has been swept away, it is finally safe for the city people to come out and start walking around importantly with their coffees. The lady at Morton's coffee house (right next to our building) doesn't know me yet; sometimes I run down for a cocoa during our half hour break between lectures... but she does know the man who arrives right after me. Every. Single. Day. He is bald and wears no cap, but has a very normal looking sort of sports jacket, and usually a newspaper. He is the type of person who blends into a crowd perfectly, but I think the Morton's barista lady has a little thing for him. She coos over him and calls him by name (Robert) and always gets his latte ready in advance. It must be nice to be a regular. There you are, some schmo in a nondescript sports jacket, and nobody notices you until you become a regular at this cafe....
And that is how it happens. One day, you're just an innocent bystander, a tourist, a visitor, a foreign student, blending in with the crowd. And then, the next day, you're a somebody. People recognize you, and you know street names. You're a regular customer at this hole in the wall cafe that nobody knows but you and your office mates. The barista has a crush on you, and calls you by your first name. You have a favorite table. You have certain cracks in the sidewalk you avoid stepping on, just out of superstition. You wait to go outside until 7:36 because you don't want to run into the street-sweeper-mobile as it blindly chugs North and South up your road. You can cue the church bells. It is easy to think that just because you know the city so well, it knows you back. It is so easy to convince yourself that because you plan your day around the movements within the city, it plans its day around you. A person could start feeling mighty important going on like this. A girl might start feeling like she's in love, and not know why, just because she can sing along with the clock chimes.
The first month of my time at Oxford was so vivid and confusing. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I didn't know which pubs to try, or, when I looked into a boutique window if it was where snobby she-she people shopped, or if it was for environmentally minded hipsters. I couldn't tell you if Morton's cocoa was better than Cafe Nero (its not, its just cheaper), I couldn't tell you how to get to the bus stop, or when the libraries closed, or what streets to avoid at night. I was afraid of being in public places, I think, because I was just so unused to it all - none of it was mine, and Oxford was a cold, indifferent stranger, full of secrets that were too dear to be entrusted to the likes of me. At Saint Olaf, I can sit on the low wall outside the chapel, and know that no one is going to reproach me. I can put my feet on the couches in fireside with confidence, and even go to the Buntrock bathroom in my socks (errr, that is... if I wanted to... not that I have...). At first, Oxford would never have allowed me such intimacies. But now, I feel like it trusts me a little more.
When I first came to Oxford, I used to see people sitting on the steps of the Bodelian, smoking, drinking coffees, laughing with their friends. I didn't have any friends, I was too scared to walk into a coffee place for weeks, and I certainly didn't feel any entitlement to my own personal perch on the steps of a 400 year old building. I am not sure if I do now, even... but I'm so close. Oxford has softened a little to me, and I'm not even sure when or how that happened. Its the little things that add up, I guess, but now, with less than a week to go, I feel like this city might possibly love me. When you know someone so well, it is impossible for them to not know just as many things about you. When I sing along with the church bells, tolling the hour, its like finishing my friends' sentences. When I take a shortcut through a little pedestrian alley, its kind of like the city is sneaking me through one of its back doors, for VIP members only, no tourists allowed. When I go on runs in the 12th century fields, I know exactly where to turn into the seemingly impassable hedges. About twenty yards down, there'll be a gap in the underbrush, and a jump-able wooden fence leading into the next set of fields, though you'd never see if it you didn't know it was there. I equate this with going through my best friend's backpack and knowing exactly where they keep that tube of chapstick I'm sure I'm entitled to borrow... in the little tiny pocket, on the right hand side. The gargoyles and grotesques on the old buildings are all recognizable now that I've walked past them so many times. When I close my eyes I can see the west facade of the Old Bodelian, and I can see the crocodile grotesque, the dragonish waterspout gargoyle, and the little stone detail of the farmer with his sycle, all in a row. It is kind of like being able to close my eyes and see a familiar face, and know where every freckle is, and just where the dimples appear.
I don't know when this love affair started. All I know is that I will be very sad to leave this beautiful city. These things happen gradually. You feel so uncomfortable and lost and shy in a place, and then all of a sudden, it is almost your home. It is the same with new people. Oxford could be a home for me, I think. It is so beautiful, and has much character and personality.
But Oxford is a city, and not a person. Three and a half months may be enough time to learn a city plan and figure out where the good cafes are, but sadly, it has not been enough time to get to know my fellow students very well, a fact we have all sheepishly affirmed with each other in trailing off sentences and murmurs. Places are just empty stages, even if they are very beautiful and old, and rich with history. Even if they are so easy to personify, and you can almost convince yourself that an actual city loves you and takes care of you like a roommate. Oxford is just a stage. There are people running across it every which way, but they are not my people. I know the stage very well, but I keep mishearing the stage directions, and all the cues are being called out with such a thick accent, I haven't quite caught on yet. I don't know who is playing a character, and who is being their real self. This the cast and crew of Oxford, and if I had another semester, maybe I would come to know and love them as much as I love the cast of Olaf or Vermont. As it is, I leave Friday morning at 6:30 am, and I have to say, I am very eager to be meeting a familiar leading lady of my own cast- my sister will meet me in Rome at 3:00 when my plane lands, and it doesn't really matter that we're in a new setting, we'll be together. The same will happen in Vermont in May, and at Olaf in the fall, and the happy thought consoles me for the loss of the beautiful city of Oxford.
I am glad to be leaving so early on Friday morning. There will be fewer people out on the street, just the delivery men whose voices I am so used to hearing through my open window. It will be just me and the city, together one last time, for a fond farewell. Someday I'll come back, and we'll do things right, Oxford. I'll meet you're family, and you'll meet mine, and of course they'll love you as much as I do. Isn't that what all lovers say at their last meeting?
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