(Well, the tear gas was more of our imagination lol)
Week Eight: Roma, Italia
October 15th – 20th, 2011
So I guess the two coins tossed with the right hand over the left shoulder really worked! I’m back in Rome! We conducted a quick round of Politics and the Arts classes on the train ride from Florence, and then we did a short walking tour to the Trevi Fountain and Pantheon. We attempted to go to the Coliseum, but October 15th was “Occupy” day around the world, so protestors marched from the Piazza della Repubblica near our hotel down to the Coliseum, where the demonstration turned violent. Carabinieri (polizia) had lined the streets and were prepared for crowd control. Our tour dead-ended as a Carabinieri blockade were preparing to send in what looked like a swat team to squelch the uprisings of hooligans lighting cars on fire. A few of us attempted to go through the blockade, and some succeeded, but there was no real reason haha we were just having fun testing the limits of the Carabinieri. We walked back towards della Repubblica to see some of the parade of political parties rallying against Berlusconi, even though apparently none of them had a solidified leader or plan in alternative to the current Italian government.
That evening I went to a little restaurant recommended by the people selling tickets for an opera recital, and it was this great Italian kitchen with many small rooms of tables, and everyone in each room talking to each other regardless of the table. The room I was in was watching the news (in Italian of course) and discussing the result of the rallies & riots still smoking just a few kilometers away. Then I attended an opera recital at La Chiesa di San Paolo Entro le Mura (St. Paul within the Walls Church), which was the same one the Texas Youth Orchestra had performed in just five years prior. The acoustics were incredible, and it was a real treat to be in the audience this time. The opera singers were even performing a few of the same songs and composers that we had done as well!
On the morning of October 16th, Dr. Brint led us on another walking tour of the city down towards the Jewish and Medieval neighborhoods. Along the way we say the remains of cars, post offices, and banks destroyed in the riots the night before. There was plenty of fresh graffiti, too! One bank, the National Bank on Via Nazionale, went untouched. The Caribinieri actually guarded that more than the Prime Minister’s palace a kilometer away. I put a round of post-cards in one of the destroyed post offices just for laughs, so if you get a postcard from Italy, the riots did not completely dismantle the Roman infrastructure. On our way back from the Medieval neighborhood, we walked behind a crowd of people in the Latin Quarter marching with a whole bunch of incents filling the air. Maybe celebrating a saint or something like that? Rome is the Catholic capital of the world I suppose. Maryalice and Jordan later joined me for lunch in the Jewish quarter, which was actually a Roman-Jewish ghetto in World War II. History Un-Fun Fact of the Day: on this day in 1943, 68 years ago, the Nazis began deporting Jews from this Ghetto to Auschwitz.
On a lighter note, we experienced our first five-hour Italian dinner today! We missed our reservation, so we ended up waiting two hours for a table to fit all twelve of us. They gave us free drinks while we waited, no service charge, and a free round of appetizers. We didn’t deserve all of that, but I think they knew we would be a huge tab that they did not want going to another restaurant. I ordered the Antipasto Barberini, which was like a hodgepodge of crazy Italian appetizers – definitely some different foods and seasonings than I’m used to, but still delicious.
The next day was a homework/class day, so it wasn’t too eventful. I wandered around the Jewish quarter (about 3 km away from the hotel) and found some pumpkin seeds, but much of the other shops were closed already by the time I got there. I was able to schedule an appointment to play some violas for the next day, though! On my way out of the neighborhood, I was approached by an Orthodox Jew and his son, who asked if I spoke Hebrew. Unfortunately I do not, but I tried to help them in English. They were trying to get directions for some place, but I could not understand where. When I pulled out my iPad to look it up, they said ‘no thanks’ and went on their way. I guess it must still be part of the season of High Holy days. Maryalice, Kirsten, Caroline and I had girls’ night that evening, which meant dinner and then walking to the Trevi Fountain since most of the tourists would be gone by then.
My final project for the Cityscapes class is to create a cityscape of the Jewish Diaspora using the cities we have visited this semester thus far, so I went back, one more time, to the Jewish quarter with Beth and Mira. We walked around some of the ruins and surrounding neighborhoods, and then ate some traditional Middle Eastern food like falafel, shawarma, schnitzel, and Bamba. I can’t believe they actually had Bamba! It’s like peanut butter-flavored cheeto puffs. I had a chance to use some of the very little Hebrew that I remember (basically only Shalom and toda raba haha). It’s always exciting to see their eyes light up to hear someone else speak Hebrew and not Italian or English. Then later that afternoon, after Beth and Mira had left, I met a lady at a bakery who spoke Italian, French, Spanish, and Hebrew, so spoke to her in Spanish…naturally…in the Jewish quarter of Rome haha. It was quite an interesting conversation because my Spanish has been completely skewed and diluted after being immersed 5+ different linguistic cultures between last spring and now. Later I made my way back to the violin shop, Claude Lebet Liutaino, for a little fun. The first viola was approximately 5.000€ and a bit twangy. Good sound, but it doesn’t have the heart of a strong viola. The second was a 1952 Vittorio Bellarosa for about 9.000€, and it sounded fantastic. It resonated the way a viola should and practically played itself (I was using one of Mr. Lebet’s own bows). The third and final viola was a 1770 Petras Johannes Mantegatia restored in 1962 for 12.000€. It was surely the oldest viola I have ever played (older than the United States!), but the sound was not as full. If I decided to upgrade my viola over the next few years/when I get a job, I would have to compare the Bellarosa to Lapo Vettori’s custom viola. The price difference certainly helps, though. While I was practicing, Mr. Lebet brought his entire staff out of the shop downstairs to see my iPad on the music stand with all my music digitally available. How cool it is to be part of presenting the new generation of gig technology to Europe! One of the apprentices talked to me for a while explaining what to look for when buying antique instruments, and then Mr. Lebet told me about his home in France and how he was nervous about giving a lecture in the next couple of days. They were all so nice and just opened up their lives to me. That evening our group went out to dinner with Lacie, a friend from CLU, and her roommate who are studying abroad in Rome. I had the squid and shrimp :) see photo below haha. We then got gelato at the Trevi Fountain and went to the Scholars Pub. It was the weirdest thing – American music in an Irish pub in Italy. The only European thing about it was the soccer matches plastered on TVs all over the room and everyone’s eyes glued to one of them. It was a fun night, nonetheless lol.
On our last full day of Rome, October 19th, we visited Vatican City’s museum and Sistine Chapel. Not much to say other than we walked a little more than 9 kilometers round trip…yikes. Who needs a car or bike? The final day began with massive thunderstorms, but luckily they subsided by the time we boarded to coaches to go to Citavecchia to leave for a Mediterranean cruise on the Celebrity Equinox.
Rome was not as magnificent as I had remembered, probably because on my last visit to Rome, it was the first overseas city I had ever been to, and we were busy with rehearsals and performances. Rome is just like every other major city, except thousands of years of ruins coexist with present-day architecture. In our Politics and the Arts class, Dr. Brint introduced us to the Freudian comparison between Rome’s architectural anachronisms and the dual consciousness of the human mind. How right they were.
