Travel-wise, my family reunion has been blessedly uneventful. Our worst fears were not realized, of course, and Julie and Aryn’s flight to Rome was on time and delivered all their bags. They would have had a row to themselves except a woman thought Aryn was so cute and sat with them, promising to move when it was time for her to sleep. Well, the woman fell asleep long before Aryn did and stayed in the open seat. Alas for Julie (though Aryn slept more than four hours).
The drive up to Rome and back was easy. It was about eleven Euro in tolls each way, but it was the kind of toll road where you pick up the ticket and pay at the end, so I won’t be buying the little Autopass for the car. There’s a monthly fee, and I’ll probably only be paying tolls a few times a month since I don’t pay one to get to and from work.
But it was amazing, that Sunday morning, to see the bleary-eyed girls emerge from security, Julie holding nine bags on her back and pushing a cart with about a billion more. Aryn ran to me (didn’t trip like last summer on the pier). We loaded up the car and started the torturous ride to our new home.
If you can avoid it, don’t plan a long car ride right after an international flight. Spend a night where you land, or fly directly into your final destination. Also, land in Europe in the evening, so you only have to make it a few hours before crashing and waking up the next morning on a new schedule.
Since their arrival we’ve been getting reacquainted, readjusting to life together. They’ve been licking their wounds and (mostly) beating jetlag. Julie went to see the house I picked out, met the landlord and gave her blessing. Now, once it stops raining long enough for the city electricians to come and hook up the electricity, we should be able to move in. Pray it’s soon.
Tuesday was Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, or, as we say here, Carnevale. Masks, parades, raucous parties, and lasagna. As it turns out, lasagna isn’t a common dish in Italy (it takes about five hours to make), and in Naples you can only find it on Carnevale. I’ve heard other places will serve it year-round, but maybe only the touristy places?
What I do know is that at any restaurant in Italy on Carnevale you can buy lasagna, and ours was amazing. I didn’t expect to like it, actually, because I haven’t liked every other “authentic” Italian lasagna I’ve had before (at nicer Italian restaurants, made by immigrants or the children of immigrants).
But the simplicity of the sauce, the freshness of the cheese, the silky smooth texture… I could’ve eaten ten helpings. Now that’s a Fat Tuesday tradition I can get behind.
When the sun comes out in the afternoons and some of the rain puddles dry up, we are hopeful that nicer weather and a house from which to have adventures are coming soon. Stay tuned as we venture out together into the great city of Naples and the lands beyond…
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
I walk alone
There’s a certain romance to travelling alone. The nearly absolute freedom of having no schedule, no one depending on you, nowhere to go but where your wandering feet take you—it’s exhilarating. It’s the freedom of the cowboy, the pirate, the high eagle. The hart, he loves the high wood, said Mother Goose, and that lone stag on a mountainside has been envied by domesticated men through the centuries.
But, mostly, being alone sucks.
I view the relentless hours with a dread unknown elsewhere in my life. To have nothing to do terrifies me. So I fill my lonely days with ambitious regimen: two hour workout while listening to Half the Sky, dinner and shower with music playing, Skype, read with music playing, read in bed, keep reading long past a reasonable bedtime until I finally, reluctantly, turn off the lights and face the agonized, empty silence. Wake up, turn music on and go to work where thankfully there are other people. Linger at work. Drive home listening to RAI Radio 3. Will that help me learn Italian? I worry about this.
Sure, lots of people live alone. I just don’t know how they do it.
I eat six or seven of the same foods over and over again. German vanilla yoghurt (or is it Swiss?), PB&J, cheese sandwiches with lettuce from the Veneto, Danish eggs, chips and salsa, Mediterranean oranges. I’ve tried weird experiments with chili and steam-bag broccoli and cheese. Neither broccoli nor black beans belong in chili, I have learned. Boxed Near East couscous is really easy to make and is tasty with chili and broccoli. Oranges, plus orange juice, plus coffee, plus chili and broccoli and black beans equals really bad gas.
I didn’t do dishes again tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Eventually I’ll run out of cups, though I did just buy three more.
I’ve been apart from Julie and Aryn before. My two deployments were much longer than this separation will end up being, but on the ship you can’t wait to get to bed. You’re never, ever alone. The two minutes per day when you can stare at the horizon without someone talking to you or needing you or demanding something from you are some of the few things keeping you going. Bed, on the ship, is the only place you get to be alone, and you hardly ever spend a reasonable (or even healthy) amount of time there. But the growing madness is familiar.
I think I’m sleeping less than normal, now. And my sleep is troubled.
I went into Naples last weekend alone. It takes one hour and twenty minutes to drive to JFC, park and hop on the metro and arrive downtown at the Archeological museum. Most of the excavated relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum are there, and it’s fascinating. Thousands of years of history and art stand silently and stare through me. I do not exist.
I can try harder to be social. I can give the growing list of friends and acquaintances a call and get together. And I will. But as the walls close in and the silence deepens, my spark begins to fade like torchlight in a tomb (whoa, block that metaphor).
It’s been a torturous process getting Julie and Aryn permission to come here. I won’t get into it, but the battle is over and they’re flying in on Sunday.
“It is not good for man to be alone,” God once said.
It’s going to be a great Valentine’s Day!
But, mostly, being alone sucks.
I view the relentless hours with a dread unknown elsewhere in my life. To have nothing to do terrifies me. So I fill my lonely days with ambitious regimen: two hour workout while listening to Half the Sky, dinner and shower with music playing, Skype, read with music playing, read in bed, keep reading long past a reasonable bedtime until I finally, reluctantly, turn off the lights and face the agonized, empty silence. Wake up, turn music on and go to work where thankfully there are other people. Linger at work. Drive home listening to RAI Radio 3. Will that help me learn Italian? I worry about this.
Sure, lots of people live alone. I just don’t know how they do it.
I eat six or seven of the same foods over and over again. German vanilla yoghurt (or is it Swiss?), PB&J, cheese sandwiches with lettuce from the Veneto, Danish eggs, chips and salsa, Mediterranean oranges. I’ve tried weird experiments with chili and steam-bag broccoli and cheese. Neither broccoli nor black beans belong in chili, I have learned. Boxed Near East couscous is really easy to make and is tasty with chili and broccoli. Oranges, plus orange juice, plus coffee, plus chili and broccoli and black beans equals really bad gas.
I didn’t do dishes again tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Eventually I’ll run out of cups, though I did just buy three more.
I’ve been apart from Julie and Aryn before. My two deployments were much longer than this separation will end up being, but on the ship you can’t wait to get to bed. You’re never, ever alone. The two minutes per day when you can stare at the horizon without someone talking to you or needing you or demanding something from you are some of the few things keeping you going. Bed, on the ship, is the only place you get to be alone, and you hardly ever spend a reasonable (or even healthy) amount of time there. But the growing madness is familiar.
I think I’m sleeping less than normal, now. And my sleep is troubled.
I went into Naples last weekend alone. It takes one hour and twenty minutes to drive to JFC, park and hop on the metro and arrive downtown at the Archeological museum. Most of the excavated relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum are there, and it’s fascinating. Thousands of years of history and art stand silently and stare through me. I do not exist.
I can try harder to be social. I can give the growing list of friends and acquaintances a call and get together. And I will. But as the walls close in and the silence deepens, my spark begins to fade like torchlight in a tomb (whoa, block that metaphor).
It’s been a torturous process getting Julie and Aryn permission to come here. I won’t get into it, but the battle is over and they’re flying in on Sunday.
“It is not good for man to be alone,” God once said.
It’s going to be a great Valentine’s Day!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Rome part tre
The next day the conference ends at lunchtime and my afternoon is my own. It’s time to think big.
Big, in Rome, is easy to find. Piazza Venezia, which vaguely reminds me of our capitol building in D.C. but seems about twice the size. Behind it, the Roman Forum, where I can nearly hear the rumble and bustle of an ancient metropolis teeming with life and power. Above the Forum, the Palatino. Behind the Forum, the Coliseum.
I remember sitting nine years ago on a hill overlooking the Forum, wishing I had someone to tell me about it all, when I noticed the garden on the hill opposite.
“I’d like to go up there,” I said, maybe out loud.
We didn’t.
This time I do. I walk around the South side, near the Circus Maximus (and, as it turns out, the Belgian embassy), which is actually the long, long way around. The entrance is within sight of the Coliseum, and I get the little handheld tour guide so I won’t just be staring at piles of rocks.
The ticket costs 12 euro and is good for the Palatino, Forum and the Coliseum. The machine is 4 euro to rent. The majesty of the palace (as envisioned in my imagination based on the ruins), as well as the absolute power of its inhabitants, quiets me. This was a private room. This was a bath. This was where Nero sequestered his own mother.
My favorite part, as I’d expected before, is the garden. The view alone is worth the entrance fee, and I only have to fight with one Japanese tour group to stare at it. The entirety of ancient Rome is at my feet. And it does not notice me.
Oranges are in season here. I steal one from the trees, but all of them within easy reach are gone so I have to climb a stone wall and jump. It’s sour. Thanks a lot, Nero.
I can’t think of any way to describe the great halls of justice still standing in the Forum, the pillars of the Coliseum, the weight of history through the ages, other than it makes me feel small. I am but one of millions who will set foot here this year, gawking at the grandeur of a cornerstone of Western civilization. My entrance fee goes to help keep this history alive, but otherwise it is unaffected by my presence.
I, on the other hand, cannot remain unchanged when I see the great bronze cross in the Coliseum. It wasn’t until this past century that the Coliseum became a symbol of early Christian persecution and martyrdom. The Pope leads a procession through here every Good Friday.
I find the Barbarini chapel, which is down the street from my hotel. This chapel was the first in Rome to commemorate the Immaculate Conception, but what distinguishes this church is its crypt.
“WHAT YOU ARE NOW, WE USED TO BE. WHAT WE ARE, YOU WILL BE,” the bones of saints scream through the years from the walls, where they are arranged in a grisly replica of the beautiful frescoes and arched ceilings in cathedrals throughout Christendom.
Skeletons in monks’ robes bow as if in prayer, and recline in death. Dust to dust, this discordant display observes like a rat’s claws on broken glass. A child’s skeleton flies above the final graveyard, holding Death’s scythe.
I emerge into the evening breathless. I stumble to a café, haunted by mortality.
“Spirit is born of spirit,” I write, “and Spirit evermore remains.” It may not be a perfect quotation, but the waning light helps, and the Scripture heals.
My Facebook picture is me standing in an old Roman piazza under that even-older Egyptian obelisk under the misty moon. I am smaller than all of this. What they are, I will soon be.
Night falls over the city, and the via Veneto begins to glow in urban anticipation. It’s Friday night in Rome.
Big, in Rome, is easy to find. Piazza Venezia, which vaguely reminds me of our capitol building in D.C. but seems about twice the size. Behind it, the Roman Forum, where I can nearly hear the rumble and bustle of an ancient metropolis teeming with life and power. Above the Forum, the Palatino. Behind the Forum, the Coliseum.
I remember sitting nine years ago on a hill overlooking the Forum, wishing I had someone to tell me about it all, when I noticed the garden on the hill opposite.
“I’d like to go up there,” I said, maybe out loud.
We didn’t.
This time I do. I walk around the South side, near the Circus Maximus (and, as it turns out, the Belgian embassy), which is actually the long, long way around. The entrance is within sight of the Coliseum, and I get the little handheld tour guide so I won’t just be staring at piles of rocks.
The ticket costs 12 euro and is good for the Palatino, Forum and the Coliseum. The machine is 4 euro to rent. The majesty of the palace (as envisioned in my imagination based on the ruins), as well as the absolute power of its inhabitants, quiets me. This was a private room. This was a bath. This was where Nero sequestered his own mother.
My favorite part, as I’d expected before, is the garden. The view alone is worth the entrance fee, and I only have to fight with one Japanese tour group to stare at it. The entirety of ancient Rome is at my feet. And it does not notice me.
Oranges are in season here. I steal one from the trees, but all of them within easy reach are gone so I have to climb a stone wall and jump. It’s sour. Thanks a lot, Nero.
I can’t think of any way to describe the great halls of justice still standing in the Forum, the pillars of the Coliseum, the weight of history through the ages, other than it makes me feel small. I am but one of millions who will set foot here this year, gawking at the grandeur of a cornerstone of Western civilization. My entrance fee goes to help keep this history alive, but otherwise it is unaffected by my presence.
I, on the other hand, cannot remain unchanged when I see the great bronze cross in the Coliseum. It wasn’t until this past century that the Coliseum became a symbol of early Christian persecution and martyrdom. The Pope leads a procession through here every Good Friday.
I find the Barbarini chapel, which is down the street from my hotel. This chapel was the first in Rome to commemorate the Immaculate Conception, but what distinguishes this church is its crypt.
“WHAT YOU ARE NOW, WE USED TO BE. WHAT WE ARE, YOU WILL BE,” the bones of saints scream through the years from the walls, where they are arranged in a grisly replica of the beautiful frescoes and arched ceilings in cathedrals throughout Christendom.
Skeletons in monks’ robes bow as if in prayer, and recline in death. Dust to dust, this discordant display observes like a rat’s claws on broken glass. A child’s skeleton flies above the final graveyard, holding Death’s scythe.
I emerge into the evening breathless. I stumble to a café, haunted by mortality.
“Spirit is born of spirit,” I write, “and Spirit evermore remains.” It may not be a perfect quotation, but the waning light helps, and the Scripture heals.
My Facebook picture is me standing in an old Roman piazza under that even-older Egyptian obelisk under the misty moon. I am smaller than all of this. What they are, I will soon be.
Night falls over the city, and the via Veneto begins to glow in urban anticipation. It’s Friday night in Rome.
Rome part due
You get exhausted overseas. You’re sick of not being able to understand what people are saying around you, the different toilets, different food, different smells, different standards of cleanliness and the constant need to do arithmetic in your head to determine how much money you’re spending. This is commonly called “culture shock,” but it’s probably more accurately culture fatigue. Not everything about a foreign land is wonderful, and home is very comfortable.
I’m not there yet (stay tuned for when it happens), but many of the people I met up in Rome had spent eighteen months or more in Italy and were happy to have a little slice of Americana when they could. So we went to Hard Rock Café and everyone got hamburgers. I had the veggie burger, which was fantastic and about half the price, and we wiled away the evening with memories of the various bands performing from the wall TVs and discussions about the best Tex-Mex chains (cuisine severely lacking in Europe). Dinner ended around nine, which is a fairly reasonable time for a Roman to start eating. Eight or eight-thirty is normal. I remember stumbling upon the Hard Rock Café after a blistering hot day nine years ago, exhausted, sick of not understanding menus and ready for American-sized portions. It was like light shone from heaven. I’ll always remember that restaurant with fondness.
But I walk through the night with a colleague, down the misty Spanish steps as the strains of vespers still echo from the Trinita di Monti church atop the Piazza Spagna. Piazza del Popolo, where a great Egyptian obelisk, captured by the Romans and erected here to channel ancient Egypt’s glory, leads us up to the fountain in the Pincio, at the edge of a huge garden called the Villa Borghese (look at a map, it’s easier).
The fountain is lit up and the light dances on the walls and ceilings and makes me think of the most beautiful fountain I’ve ever seen, the Trevi. I stepped out to see it before dinner, fulfilling the wish I’d made by throwing a coin in nine years ago. I doubt so little that I’ll be back that I don’t bother this time. Bad move?
A little creeped out by the dark edge of the garden (never walk through a dark city garden at night, someone once told me) and that car that drove slowly past us and is now idling at the bottom of the hill, we head on to gawk up at more churches, look in more shop windows and drink in the night air of Rome.
I’m not there yet (stay tuned for when it happens), but many of the people I met up in Rome had spent eighteen months or more in Italy and were happy to have a little slice of Americana when they could. So we went to Hard Rock Café and everyone got hamburgers. I had the veggie burger, which was fantastic and about half the price, and we wiled away the evening with memories of the various bands performing from the wall TVs and discussions about the best Tex-Mex chains (cuisine severely lacking in Europe). Dinner ended around nine, which is a fairly reasonable time for a Roman to start eating. Eight or eight-thirty is normal. I remember stumbling upon the Hard Rock Café after a blistering hot day nine years ago, exhausted, sick of not understanding menus and ready for American-sized portions. It was like light shone from heaven. I’ll always remember that restaurant with fondness.
But I walk through the night with a colleague, down the misty Spanish steps as the strains of vespers still echo from the Trinita di Monti church atop the Piazza Spagna. Piazza del Popolo, where a great Egyptian obelisk, captured by the Romans and erected here to channel ancient Egypt’s glory, leads us up to the fountain in the Pincio, at the edge of a huge garden called the Villa Borghese (look at a map, it’s easier).
The fountain is lit up and the light dances on the walls and ceilings and makes me think of the most beautiful fountain I’ve ever seen, the Trevi. I stepped out to see it before dinner, fulfilling the wish I’d made by throwing a coin in nine years ago. I doubt so little that I’ll be back that I don’t bother this time. Bad move?
A little creeped out by the dark edge of the garden (never walk through a dark city garden at night, someone once told me) and that car that drove slowly past us and is now idling at the bottom of the hill, we head on to gawk up at more churches, look in more shop windows and drink in the night air of Rome.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Rome part 1
Let me run down how I got to Rome. After parking my car on base at Capodichino, I took the red Alibus from the airport directly to the train station (cost: 3 euro). Using the ticket kiosk at Garibaldi termini, I purchased a second-class ticket on the Eurostar high-speed train directly to Roma termini (cost: 44 euro). This non-stop ride lasts 1:10 and is very comfortable. There are two slower trains for less: one is also Eurostar, lasts about 1:45 and is 34 euro, and the slowest is 20 euro and is advertised to last 2:12, but I’ve heard it’s not as comfortable and can take much longer. I imagine I’ll take the other trains in the future to save money. I may take the Eurostar high-speed back, though. More info here. All in all, it took two hours and seven minutes from parking the car to stepping off the train in Rome.
I stayed at the Ambasciatori Palace, which for the price (209 euro) I actually can’t recommend. It was nice, but not as nice as its neighbor, the Rose Garden hotel. I’ll stay there next time I’m on per diem in Rome. I’ll be looking for more affordable accommodations when I have no official need to be within walking distance of the American Embassy.
The Embassy is on via Vittoria Veneto, in a very nice part of town right next to the Hard Rock Café (and yes, I went there). Our conference was in a palatial ballroom with frescoes portraying Italy’s strength and history on the walls and ceiling. The sun streamed in through stained-glass windows in the morning.
A while ago I was watching a movie set in Italy (Ocean’s Twelve?) when I said to Julie “someday I want to be over in Rome, but going to work, you know?”
“You’re such a dreamer,” she said.
“Yeah.”
It was a good conference, but the evenings were for exploring. One of the conference attendees is marrying an Italian—a Roman, in fact—and our first night he took us to the restaurant of his brother’s wife’s something something for some authentic Roman cuisine. As any American tourist who has been to Rome knows, the pizza in Rome is not like ours. I’ve seen some tight lips and very disappointed looks at a pizza ordered in Rome after a grueling day tromping from the Coliseum to the Vatican to the Pantheon, but tonight I’m not exhausted and I have a few more nights here to sample other cuisine, so I go for it.
Pizza in Italy is regional, just like anything else. Neapolitan pizza isn’t much like Roman pizza. The main difference is the crust. Neapolitan pizza has a fluffy, thicker crust that can bubble up in the brick oven and droops down like New York pizza if you pick up a slice (though they don’t really eat it by the slice here). Roman pizza has a thin crust, baked hard like a cracker. The toppings start about an inch in, so the fire scorches that edge enough to make it dangerous (I’ve heard of it cutting unsuspecting mouths). Artichokes are a traditional Roman ingredient, and of course parmesan cheese, so there you have my pizza. Knife-edged and salty, but delicious. Along with the deep-fried vegetable antipasti, I’m so stuffed I need a limoncello after dinner.
“Deep fried vegetables?” another member of the party says, exasperated. “Pasta, pizza—how can a culture whose diet is founded on carbs, cheese and oil fit into the pants you Italians fit into?”
Our Roman host shrugs. “It wasn’t until McDonalds came to Italy that Italians started to have problems with their weight.”
“But it’s just carbs and cheese! Oil! And you eat it so late at night!”
The table picks up the conversation and discusses the possible explanations—the amount of exercise the Italians get by walking everywhere versus Americans’ drive-park-sit-drive-enter house-sit rhythm, portion sizes, and the fact that they don’t eat a meal this size but once a week or so.
The relative freshness of the food seems to be the biggest reason, according to the Italians present. “It’s the preservatives that make you fat,” one of them insists.
Maybe, but one thing is sure. What we think we know about dieting and nutrition may not be all there is to know. A lot has been said for the Mediterranean diet, but if in America we started focusing on eating even more pasta, cheese and deep fried veggies, Walmart would be stocking a whole new size of pants (and I don’t mean less than 0).
The second night, just like nine years ago, I find myself eating at the Hard Rock Café. But that’s another story.
I stayed at the Ambasciatori Palace, which for the price (209 euro) I actually can’t recommend. It was nice, but not as nice as its neighbor, the Rose Garden hotel. I’ll stay there next time I’m on per diem in Rome. I’ll be looking for more affordable accommodations when I have no official need to be within walking distance of the American Embassy.
The Embassy is on via Vittoria Veneto, in a very nice part of town right next to the Hard Rock Café (and yes, I went there). Our conference was in a palatial ballroom with frescoes portraying Italy’s strength and history on the walls and ceiling. The sun streamed in through stained-glass windows in the morning.
A while ago I was watching a movie set in Italy (Ocean’s Twelve?) when I said to Julie “someday I want to be over in Rome, but going to work, you know?”
“You’re such a dreamer,” she said.
“Yeah.”
It was a good conference, but the evenings were for exploring. One of the conference attendees is marrying an Italian—a Roman, in fact—and our first night he took us to the restaurant of his brother’s wife’s something something for some authentic Roman cuisine. As any American tourist who has been to Rome knows, the pizza in Rome is not like ours. I’ve seen some tight lips and very disappointed looks at a pizza ordered in Rome after a grueling day tromping from the Coliseum to the Vatican to the Pantheon, but tonight I’m not exhausted and I have a few more nights here to sample other cuisine, so I go for it.
Pizza in Italy is regional, just like anything else. Neapolitan pizza isn’t much like Roman pizza. The main difference is the crust. Neapolitan pizza has a fluffy, thicker crust that can bubble up in the brick oven and droops down like New York pizza if you pick up a slice (though they don’t really eat it by the slice here). Roman pizza has a thin crust, baked hard like a cracker. The toppings start about an inch in, so the fire scorches that edge enough to make it dangerous (I’ve heard of it cutting unsuspecting mouths). Artichokes are a traditional Roman ingredient, and of course parmesan cheese, so there you have my pizza. Knife-edged and salty, but delicious. Along with the deep-fried vegetable antipasti, I’m so stuffed I need a limoncello after dinner.
“Deep fried vegetables?” another member of the party says, exasperated. “Pasta, pizza—how can a culture whose diet is founded on carbs, cheese and oil fit into the pants you Italians fit into?”
Our Roman host shrugs. “It wasn’t until McDonalds came to Italy that Italians started to have problems with their weight.”
“But it’s just carbs and cheese! Oil! And you eat it so late at night!”
The table picks up the conversation and discusses the possible explanations—the amount of exercise the Italians get by walking everywhere versus Americans’ drive-park-sit-drive-enter house-sit rhythm, portion sizes, and the fact that they don’t eat a meal this size but once a week or so.
The relative freshness of the food seems to be the biggest reason, according to the Italians present. “It’s the preservatives that make you fat,” one of them insists.
Maybe, but one thing is sure. What we think we know about dieting and nutrition may not be all there is to know. A lot has been said for the Mediterranean diet, but if in America we started focusing on eating even more pasta, cheese and deep fried veggies, Walmart would be stocking a whole new size of pants (and I don’t mean less than 0).
The second night, just like nine years ago, I find myself eating at the Hard Rock Café. But that’s another story.
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