Florentine Adventure--Part 2

Speaking of Santa Croce, all four of us were walking toward this church through a crowded street market last Friday. David, with the only map, led the way. He tends to walk quickly and on this particular occasion the rest of us lagged behind. Carter ran to catch up with his Dad and soon after Stephen and I lost sight of them. I really didn't know whether they had gone straight, turned off or what but when I looked down a side street I saw what I thought might be Santa Croce and Stephen and I went in that direction. It was a sunny day about 2 p.m. and my inclination was to press on to our destination and assume we would meet David and Carter there. (Neither of us had cell phones.) David knew I didn't have a map but he knows that I readily ask people for directions. That's what I did and within about 15 minutes we arrived at the wonderfully spacious piazza in front of the church. David and Carter, however, were nowhere in sight. I became a bit more anxious because I was sure we would find them there. We had to reunite eventually because we left our luggage at the hotel and I had in my possession tickets for a 6 p.m. train to Rome. Also in our favor was that Florence is fairly small and the obvious points where we would meet up were few. My main worry was that perhaps Carter had not actually caught up with David and was traipsing around Florence by himself. I was determined, however, to wait it out at Santa Croce rather than wander the streets in search of them. Still, they didn't come and Stephen and I decided to make our way back on the most obvious street to our hotel. No sooner had we started walking when we saw two policemen. We had told the boys in Rome that if they ever got lost to tell a policeman. I explained our situation and they called the hotel. Turns out that David, along with Carter, had returned there first and recently departed, leaving word should we check in that we should all meet there at 4 p.m. All was well! I assumed they were making their way once again to Santa Croce, so Stephen and I stayed put. Sure enough they arrived a short time later. We celebrated with overpriced gelati and returned to Rome on our 6 p.m. train.

Florentine Adventure--Part 1

We spent last Thursday and Friday in Florence. Our quick assessment was that it was cleaner than Rome and more manageable, smaller and therefore walkable. It was a nice change from the chaos of Rome but we concluded that had we spent our four-month sojourn there we might have gotten bored. Plus, it has the art but not the ruins! In the Uffizi, Carter and I liked the Botticellis, Carter and David liked the Pieros and Stephen liked anything with St. Sebastian in it. After our reading on Renaissance art I've decided that I'd like to know more about Savonarola, the Dominican monk who denounced the paganism of the Medici and who was executed in the piazza outside the Uffizi. There is a marker on the precise spot. At Nerbone's, in a market similar to the Reading Terminal, we lunched on the local favorite bagnata, a beef sandwich dipped in meat juices (they like meat in Florence). Dinner was wonderful as well--I love the fagioli. I make these at home with a lot less success. On Friday we visited a museum on the history of science and saw Galileo's telescopes and his embalmed finger. You can't beat that! I've concluded that Galileo is overrated. It was Copernicus who first had the idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm not sure that Galileo was really entitled to the elaborate tomb he has near Michelangelo's and Dante's in Santa Croce either.

Museums

Thanks for all your comments regarding Muti! Cora, I'm with you in that the first photo looks the most like him and the second and third are not as convincing. Stephen, my aspiring filmmaker, took the photos before the performance started. I guess we'll never know for sure whether we saw Muti or not! Earlier in the day we visited the Campidoglio, which observers call the nexus of ancient and modern Rome. You walk up a raft of steps to the piazza, where stands the monumental statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback. I consulted my college art history text to learn about the statue's significance and we took lots of photographs. Funny then, that we would see the same impressive statue again inside the Campidoglio museum. Turns out that the original Marcus Aurelius was moved indoors since my college text was published and a copy now stands in the piazza. (I guess that means I'm old.) Here in Rome history abuts history if you will. In any given museum you may find Roman statues, copies of Roman statues, Roman copies of Greek statues, Renaissance copies of Roman statues...you get the idea. We have seen the same bust of Caracalla I don't know how many times. My boys are forever asking me, "Is this real?" I'm not sure what real means. Popes moved things here and there and rich Italians collected any number of unrelated objects and housed them together, so you're often not sure exactly what you're seeing. Wall text, usually only in Italian, is not much help. And the guards, when they're in the seats, are reading newspapers or playing with their cell phones. My boys get a big kick out of this. Italians know that no matter what they do people will come from all over the world to see these treasures.

Is this man Riccardo Muti?

Last night we attended a musical-play by Kurt Weill. I am certain that Riccardo Muti, the former conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was sitting a mere 10 feet away from us. David is not so certain. Readers, please weigh in. Is the man in the photos below Riccardo Muti?

What do you think?

Buca di Ripetta

Pastor Dave Hodgdon of Rome Baptist Church has a gift for using apt illustrations in his sermons, which are direct and scripturally sound. We all enjoy going to church there. At the close of every service guests are invited to stand up and say where they're from. We've seen visitors from Nairobi (who brought greetings from his Baptist church there), Australia, Panama, Germany and various U.S. cities. Last week there were two architectural students from Penn State (are you reading this Greg Berzinsky?). Here in Rome, where we all feel like foreigners, we can worship together as one body of believers. Afterward we went to a restaurant (named above) recommended by an unusal guidebook called "City Secrets." All except Stephen tried the octopus. At the end of our meal we began speaking with the couple at the next table, who were there to celebrate their 36th anniversary. More rain thwarted our plans to walk to Capitoline Hill, so we came home instead to find that a cat had crawled through our window and according to Stephen, was "eating the parmesan cheese!" Carter began practicing his cello at about 5 p.m. Ten minutes into the practice, the neighbors began banging on the wall. This we found odd, because of all the noises we make here, cello music would seem to be the least offensive. Also, these neighbors tend to shout, listen to music, play the piano and do all sorts of other wide-awake activities very late into the night. Carter tried again today without incident. Perhaps he'll have to avoid practicing on the weekends, which will simply break his heart (just kidding).

Cello teacher

We found a cello teacher and Carter had his first lesson last Wednesday. As seems to be the case with all our activities, we needed to travel a distance to get there. Marius Parascan lives in Trastevere, to the south of us, in a neighborhood in all the guidebooks but one which we had not yet visited. The name of his street is Circonvallagione Gianicolense. (The Italians are fond of syllables.) Mr. Parascan is actually an English-speaking Romanian who plays in the orchestra at the Opera Theater of Rome, where we saw the ballet. He has been to the U.S. and performed in Carnegie Hall with an Italian chamber ensemble. Carter was a trooper in how he dealt with language differences and Mr. Parascan's quirky teaching style, and he was rewarded with a gelato on the trek home. I have developed a fondess for the Italian version of hot chocolate, which is a cross between American hot chocolate and hot fudge. It's like drinking a candy bar. I ordered one, received two and was charged for one- and one-half, but I did manage to drink both (didn't want to waste it). Today at 5:30 p.m. we are going to the theater to pick up Mr. Parascan's cello, which he is renting to us at a rate cheaper than we could find elsewhere. We have read about the ice and snow back home. It has been mild here but rainy. This weekend we are all reading about Renaissance art in preparation for a trip to Florence this Thursday.

Sistine Chapel

Yesterday we beheld the glories of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was an indisputable genius, even though I don't count him among my favorite artists. His vision was original, his execution virtually flawless. Jonah appears 3-D, his legs seeming to hang down from the ceiling. The recent restoration of the frescoes revealed the colors as Michelangelo painted them, and they are gorgeous--the greens, oranges, blues and golds in particular. In the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo gave God a beautiful green scarf that flies in wind below him. I loved the energetic posture of Ezekial and the lyricism of the Libyan Sybil. Even though blue preponderates in The Last Judgment, the blue in Mary's dress manages to pop out. We also saw the School of Athens--more later.

Appearances

Visually, Rome is a matter of extremes. Trash litters the city, dumpsters line the streets, and no one, it seems, cleans up after their dogs (and everyone has a dog)! Yet beauty surrounds you-- in the architecture, patterns everywhere, the shape of the trees, and in the sunlight, which truly is different from the light back home. In the middle of one of our transportation crises, I looked up in the twilight to see three exquisite stained glass windows shining in the center of a dark building. Doors are made beautiful with intricate iron- and woodwork. The Italian sense of dress is also a matter of extremes--many people wear tacky, cheap-looking clothes, yet once in awhile you will spy an elegant gentleman or lady clad in long wool coat in brown or loden green, luxurious scarf, with fine leather shoes and bag. This I was noticing especially on our way to church yesterday. In the service, we were reminded that what people look like does not matter --it's what's inside that counts!

Moving along, sometimes

One day before the deadline, we successfully applied for our persmission to stay. This was our second try at our second post office. The first time an unfriendly postal worker shooed us away and we were afraid we would get the same lady. Fortunately, it seemed to be an entirely different staff on this day. The long lines seem a constant, however. The gentleman who received our papers looked through them quickly and said all we needed were additional copies of our passports, so we went out into the neighborhood looking for a store to make copies. We did that and returned to the post office. I thought we were finished but he looked more carefully at our papers and questioned a few things. We found someone in line to translate and resolved the problems. We paid our money and left, feeling triumphant. The actual permits are sent to our local police station and we are not even sure how they will notify us to pick them up. They may even arrive after we leave Italy! On another subject, we attended the ballet in the exquisite opera theater. Each seat seemed to have its own personal chandelier, with a huge one hanging down from the ceiling in the center. The ballets themselves were strange, but we expected this. They were so strange they were enjoyable. Carter wrote in his journal about the second ballet, "Parade," something to the effect that there were a series of folks who came out to dance, including a Japanese fellow, a horse and two Cubist figures, none of which had anything to do with the other. Before the performance I managed to speak with a cellist in the orchestra, who put me in touch with another English-speaking cellist who may be able to give Carter cello lessons here in Rome. We left the ballet early to find that the metro had closed for the night, so we were forced to improvise with a series of buses to get home. Moreover, the following night we tried to go to baseball practice and the metro just stopped. Despite lots of announcements over the intercome, even the Italians didn't seem to know what was going on and everyone kept running off and running back on the metro car. It finally stopped for good and we all went up to street level looking for buses. We were about halfway between home and baseball but couldn't find a bus with room to go in either direction. After much walking we found a trolley and another bus to take us home. So we missed baseball that night. The following day Stephen and I went to the Napoleon Museum because Stephen is writing a report on Napoleon. He filmed quite a bit inside the museum. We then tried to locate a fencing studio to the north of the city. We ended up walking a big circle alongside a major highway and came across a gypsy camp down an embankment. It was like a shantytown and was very depressing to see in the rain. In this section of the city, almost everyone is driving cars--there is no foot traffic. The few passersby we encountered helped us eventually to locate the fencing studio. We met a pyschology professor there who translated for us and gave us a lift to the nearest bus depot. I think this fencing studio is too hard for us to get to via public transportation, but I have another one to investigate. Fencing might work out if baseball doesn't. After that long day we watched "Spartacus" on the laptop. I haven't mentioned too much about the food yet. We are mostly cooking at home but have eaten in a few pizzarias, one Indian restaurant, where we each had a throne to sit on, and at the local casual restaurant, where we had a thick, millet soup, pork and pasta with clams. David said that it was about $15 cheaper than our usual outings to Phil's back home. P.S. I enjoy your posted comments, so please keep them up. It lets me know who is reading this!

Baseball and ballet

Yesterday we met with Ludovica, Giovanna's older daughter, who is very sophisticated and fluent in English. She translated the remaining parts of the permit to stay application. Today we will try to submit it again to the post office. Ludovica said that no officials really know what to do with it and don't want to handle it because the rules change with each administration. I am following another American couple's blog, and they are having the same problems that we are. We went by two buses and two metros to the boys' baseball practice. Two parents spoke English, which helped. The boys played in a gym with tennis balls. Carter and Stephen liked it but I don't know if we can make that long a trip three times each week for practices. There is a game for Stephen's team this Saturday. A parent offered to drive him, so we'll see. We bought tickets to the ballet tonight--three ballets by Massine-Picasso, which of are of great historic significance. I'm really looking forward to it but Stephen is not.

Church and wanderings

Yesterday we were blessed by a worship service in English with communion at Rome Baptist Church. David and I have attended this church on our two previous trips to Rome. On the previous Sunday 195 people worshiped there (to give you an idea of its size). There were many Americans, of course (from Seattle, Florida, Chicago) and many people from the Philippines. Here in Rome, they speak the best English I have found. Today we got very little accomplished, though we tried. We are still attempted to acquire a "permit to stay." So far we have been to two police stations and two post offices--they keep sending us to other agencies! We then tried to join a sports club with a pool so the boys could swim. We were told that there is no free swimming in Italy for people younger than 18. They can only take lessons. Finally, we tried to locate a wireless hotspot and found that the address led us to somebody's garage. At home the power went off again when I was cooking. Apparently you can't cook and have the lights on at the same time. We ate by candlelight. Another exciting bit of news--I had sent a folding bike from home to here, thinking that we could use it to get around. I received noticed that the bike had arrived, but that I needed to pay over 300 euros and go the the airport to retrieve it. (It cost less than half that to send it.) We have decided not to open it and just have it returned home--we can do without the bike! Still and all, we're having fun. The boys are working well at their studies and are enjoying themselves tremendously. Tomorrow we start baseball and the following day fencing, if we can find these places.

Igea Street

A bit about our neighborhood--200 meters from our apartment building is the main street. Here we have a gas station, flower vendor, and a variety of tiny shops selling lingerie, pet supplies, plasticware such as small trash cans, brooms etc. and other goods. At the end of the block sits a sandwich/coffee shop, clearly the most active place on the street. Everyone hangs out here. Across the street is a large (by Roman standards) supermarket, which reminds me of the one across from Tenth Church. Carter even found peanut butter here, which is difficult to do in Rome (where there's a will there's a way I guess).

We have arrived

I am writing from an Internet shop -- we discovered that we do not have wireless access from our apartment. Our flight was delayed one hour because we had no pilot and a substitute was called. He or she managed to get the job done and we landed in Rome only a bit late. Giovanna and her daughter Cristina met us at the apartment and gave us a short orientation. It is not large and cooking will be a challenge. Tonight we managed to shut off our power just because I was using two burners and a small toaster oven while we had all the lights on. Though small, the apartment is divided into two floors. We have set up desks for the boys and managed to get in some schooling today as well as take a bus ride to help us get oriented. There are a few little shops nearby as well as a big supermarket, so buying necessities should not be a problem.

It is rather warm and was rainy today. Tomorrow we try to secure our permission to stay from the local police office.