Rome Day One

I arrived into Rome from Bern at an eminently reasonable 9:15 in the morning - about when most Italians are just contemplating the day ahead. The train station was packed as usual, and I ambled over to the Autogrill outlet to fetch a yogurt and a couple of cappucinos. That done, I headed to the ATM to pull out some cash and was unhappy to find the terminal within the Rome train station wasn't playing nicely with international cards that day. An English lady who had inserted her card into the machine ahead of me had the same problem. We conversed briefly, and decided to join forces in finding an ATM that actually would work. After convincing myself she had no bad intentions towards my bag (and who would want a bag of sweaty nasty clothes anyway,) I searched the downstairs mall area for an ATM - no dice. We ended up hauling down the street and finally did find one. I enjoyed a cappuccino with the English woman (who turned out to live in Geneva) and we exchanged numbers - she was good company.


More of Trajan's Forum.

I had developed some sort of fell illness on the train, no doubt from the countless muddy European kids at Open Air St. Gallen, and to my dismay, it hit me hard immediately after breakfast - stuffed up nose, scratchy throat, lightheadness and so on and on. I fought back and managed to find my hotel a few blocks off the train station (or hostel, rather). At 21 euro a night it was a pretty sweet deal, but it turned out I had booked a day ahead of the day it actually was. The front desk man took pity on me and didn't charge me, and I stowed my crap in the locker behind the desk and away I went to enjoy Rome, me and my virii.


Bits of Trajan's Forum.

I had no particular objective in mind, but decided to shoot for the Forum and Palatine Hill in lieu of any better ideas. I bought a subway pass for the day, ambled below ground (good god it was hot and stuffy down there, to say nothing of up there.) Although the Rome subway is not as new and spiffy as it could be, and you are vaguely aware that you may be carried off by gypsies at any time, it is at least efficient, and I was at the Colesseo stop in no time at all.


The Arch of Constantine, dedicated in 315 AD and beloved by tourists ever since.

I do love the Roman forum - have been before - and I like Roman history. Something about all that martial and eminently reasonable bloodlust, destruction, and fearsome powers of engineering appeals to me. Perhaps the report I did in 10th grade about the excess of Emperor Nero has something to do with it as well - spending time as a young teenager reading about history's most disgusting acts of hedonism will cause anyone to fall in love with an especially vibrant culture. But of course the Colesseum is marvelous, worth seeing - gigantic and unteardownable, somehow surviving since 72 AD without too much damage (beyond various attempts at converting it into a church). Lions never actually ate Christians here, but far nastier things occurred- griffon vultures used to live fat and happy lives in the awnings, feeding on the eyeballs and other bits of fallen gladiators and far-flung (doubtless confused) wild beasts. The bloodlust instinct has been sated in modern humanity with stuff like football and cleats-on rugby matches - nothing like the spectacles of the Romans - but you can be sure that if they began staging these again, attendance would be epic. I like to say I would not go but of course I would, especially if they (as was supposedly done) flooded the whole damn thing to stage naval battles, an interior Carthaginians against Legions battle, hours of fun with the loss of a few hundred expendable slaves. No, I wouldn't like to see that at all. Yes.


Vittorio Emanuele II's heinous pile from the side.

I walked by the Forum for a while, navigating around frightfully sunburned tourists and scrawny, hairy men posing as gladiators - but the heat and sun got to me, and I decided that sweating through my already sickly pores in an attempt to access Palatine Hill - I would be heading back later -was unwise and foolish. I beat a retreat towards the Vittorio Emanuele II monument, the heinous pile erected in honor of the first King of Unified Italy. (Let's see how well all that worked out).


Another view of the Pile.

It's only merit is its disgustingly huge size, which can be viewed from pretty much anywhere in the city - to construct it, various priceless monuments and edifices (including the house of Michelangelo) were whacked down to put it up from 1911 to 1935. Romans don't like it much either, and the signpost explaining it is almost entirely sarcastic. It is often called "the typewriter". It does serve a purpose in providing a handy meeting point and orientation tool for tourists, but beyond that, I believe it should be torn down and forgotten about forever and ever. Vittorio Emanuel III was roughly 4 and a half feet tall and ineffectual, which is a sort of revenge - he supported the Fascists and was eventually kicked out of Italy by popular referendum in 1947. Go look at a photo of him: he resembles a leprechaun.


Some pillars. I will not ID them individually for you.

I did take some photos of the always nice to look at Trajan's Column, finished in 113 AD. The bas-relief documents the awesomeness of Trajan himself in his military career - I wish I could have a column documenting my own achievements put up when I pass on, but it wouldn't be half as exciting, would feature a lot of computers and whinging about inadequate food. The statue on top is one of St. Peter because Rome's Catholics feel a burning need to plop something Christian on top of a healthy majority of Roman monuments to prove they can.


Some details of Constantine's Arch. There's a menorah being carried off from the Holy Land with a little bit too much pleasure somewhere in there.

After the Forum, I made my way to the entirely too-hard to find Trevi Fountain. On the way, I bought some cold pills from a Roman pharmacist. After popping them, I realized I had no idea if they were the non-drowsy variety, and they probably were not, and I was probably going to have a fairly interesting evening as a direct result. Whoops. I did see the Trevi Fountain and it was very large and magnificent and packed with Japanese tourists taking photos of one another, so I didn't stay long. I headed to the Spanish Steps. In route, I had lunch - I am falling in love with Italian tuna fish.


The cold medicine kicked in around about when I was ascending the Spanish Steps to the Villa Medici, which was sort of delightful. My forehead ascended somewhere about 10 feet above my body and I wandered the park in a sort of haze, nearly bumping into pissed off looking busts of eminent Romans and trying not to laugh at the Segway tours that passed about me like schools of lame-ass fish. I found a comparatively non-trashed piece of grass to lie on and had an invigorating two hour nap, and the gypsies didn't even carry me away and sell me to Romania in the interim. It was great.

For dinner, I walked to the Pantheon. The Pantheon, built in 125 AD, is one of my favorite Roman monuments because it is so startlingly modern, beyond modern- it baffles the mind how anyone could have built something that mathematically perfect. It has been converted into a church and Vittorio Emmanuel II was stuck there. Royalist Italians still hold a vigil over his tomb and provide a guestbook to sign. I managed not to write something about how YOUR MONUMENT SUCKS in it, and merely stood about in the middle of the building and looked out of the hole in the center, a doped-up smile on my face. I am a credit to my country.

I had dinner somewhere nearby: antipasto with a fearsome but tasty quantity of eggplant, and a large and delicious Roman-style artichoke. Growing somewhat bilious and fearful of what might result, I headed back to the hostel to get a full night's sleep. All the kids in the Hostel were planning to go out and drink like six bottles of vodka (which they had already bought) and do exciting things, but I felt like three week old ass and was not able to join them. Damn this European cold to hell. Also: sleeping while sick in hostel's is difficult and I would not recommend it. But at least there were no bedbugs.